Dropbox doesn't "sync"....alternatives?

[brykins]

I have Dropbox on three desktop PC's in the house and everything syncs great. I have Dropbox on my Android handset and it allows me to download but that's all. I assumed that they would implement syncing but it seems like a forgotten priority for them going by their forums.

So - any alternatives that will simply keep a chosen directory/set of directories in sync between a PC and my handset over the air/wifi? Only looking to sync a max of 2Gb.

 

[companionlink]

Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but you might check out Box.net (Box.net | Simple Online Collaboration: Online File Storage, FTP Replacement, Team Workspaces ~ Free Version) as it's the closest thing to Dropbox that I know of.


- David Z

 

[woodsb123]

Hi Brykins, you didn't mention which android phone that you own, not that it should matter, also I'm not sure what your definition of syncing is, however, I have the droid eris and i'm able to sync files from my pc to my phone with no issues. Whenever I'm on my pc, I just put the files that I want to appear on my phone into the "dropbox" folder on my pc and it shows up on my phone. To add files from my phone back to my pc, I just open the dropbox app, click the menu button, and then select upload, then I'm prompted to select which type of file that I'm uploading. Once this is completed, I check my "dropbox" folder on my pc and the file is there. Also, make sure that you go into the settings on your phone and make sure you have linked your phone with your dropbox acct. Hope this helps.

 

[28064212]

Whenever I'm on my pc, I just put the files that I want to appear on my phone into the "dropbox" folder on my pc and it shows up on my phone

Does it actually sync to your phone though? When I was using it, you could view the files on your phone when you had a connection, but you had to actually manually download it if you wanted to have it for offline viewing. And you had to do it file-by-file, which is pretty useless. There was no real "sync", it just allowed you to access files. The Dropbox and Box.net apps are essentially just front-ends to their website, you'd get as much functionality if you just visited their website on the mobile browser

OP, I'm using SugarSync at the moment. It's free as well, and actually has real syncing capabilities. It's not perfect, there's no background syncing (you have to manually start a sync on a by-folder basis). Deletions can sometimes cause trouble, and you can end up with duplicates, but it's by far the best sync app I've tried, they're much further down the road than the alternatives

 

[janpetras]

That's the "sync" - making them available for download.
Are you mad? You're asking for it to download everything into your phone.
Some people have over 50GB of data in there...
The best you can do is download a whole folder.
Sheesh man Dropbox is perfect the way it is. I wouldn't want it downloading stuff when I don't need them.

 

[28064212]

That's the "sync" - making them available for download.
Are you mad? You're asking for it to download everything into your phone.
Some people have over 50GB of data in there...
The best you can do is download a whole folder.
Sheesh man Dropbox is perfect the way it is. I wouldn't want it downloading stuff when I don't need them.

And some people have a hundred files in 1MB that they want offline access to. And want to be able to edit it on their phone, without having to download it through DropBox, edit it, re-upload it, delete the original and delete the file on the phone (since it's no longer the 'live' version). The entire point of DropBox is it's syncing capabilities, otherwise it might as well just be a web browser.

Also, SugarSync has the ability to select which folders should be synced, just like the DropBox desktop client. And as far as I can remember (could be wrong), there was no way to download a whole folder in DropBox, you had to download the files individually

Bottom line, DropBox is not a sync app. SugarSync is

 

[brykins]

Ended up with SugarSync. Dropbox works over PC's but only makes 'synced' files available to download, not a true sync. SugarSync allows me to actually sync up to 5Gb of files .... of which I only actually sync a few hundred Mb but at least the are sync'd.

I'm also using it to remote backup while I am ou. If I take a photo, I can move it to SugarSync on the phone and on the next sync, it's on my desktop....which at the time might be hundreds of miles away.