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Some may think that this is a repost of a previous quistion, but I have been looking at a lot of post and tried a lot of tools - but none gave me what I want.

I really like dropbox and use it a lot privately. Problem is that I kinda wan't the same service on my work machine.

I'm using a network directory to store project files. Sometimes the network is down OR I experience issues with MS Word because the files are located on the network and not locally on my machine (yes, word is like that).

I just want to have a sync tool that push and pulls all the files from a network dir down to my machine and vice versa - in the same way dropbox do. But just no upload to an external storage service.

A lot of the programs that people recommend do not work with network drives (Live Mesh etc.)

So far I'm using SyncToy and have setup a schedule sync, but I'm not at all happy with it. Want the sync to be instant - like dropbox.

My solution has to work on Windows 7...

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  • cubby.com does "sync without external storage" (you can decide for each folder whether it replicated to the cloud or not). The sync still actually traverses their servers as I understand, but is instant.
    – Paul
    Dec 4, 2012 at 8:09
  • I can't use a service that travers other servers. That would be regarded as leaking data. Against company policy.. bugger...
    – Norfeldt
    Dec 4, 2012 at 13:22
  • Have you tried allwaysync.com It works with all kinds of stuff and has bidirectional sync capabilities
    – Phillip R.
    Dec 17, 2012 at 20:54

3 Answers 3

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+25

What about Sparkleshare?

It uses git under the hood, but you have nothing else to do with except creating folders which you want to be synced and add your clients.

SparkleShare needs a Linux host, this host could mount the networkdrive through Samba in /home/storage/[project].

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  • SparkleShare looks very promising and I have installed it to test it out. But I can't seem to link it to my network drive.... To hook it up I need to provide a server address and folder direction. In my instance I would like to sync "Q:\demo folder", but putting "Q" as the adress and "demo folder" gives no luck
    – Norfeldt
    Dec 14, 2012 at 12:13
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Use git. This is powerful version controll system, that allows you to push/pull all info in any time, make branches, revert changes, and everything can be online in any repositary

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  • I can't... I'm not the only one who uses this shared folder and the other people would not know howto use git.. and AFAIK I have to manually push and pull with git all the time. I'm not working with code but mainly MS documents.
    – Norfeldt
    Dec 4, 2012 at 13:17
  • Doesnt matter what are you doing, coding or office tasks, git or any other version control system can track changes in files. I'm not sure, but there might be some schedulers to push/pull data from server. P.s. git is not hard as it looks 4-5 terminal commands enought to work with this system
    – sanny Sin
    Dec 4, 2012 at 14:50
  • Terminal commands kinda rule out the automation that I was looking for - hence why I was referering to a dropbox-semilar-solution. Using a system like git also requires the other participants to use it.
    – Norfeldt
    Dec 5, 2012 at 11:43
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Because I can not add a comment to @sanny Sin's answer, I put this an answer.

Actually, git is perfect for this job. You can even automate it. My idea is to write a small shell/python/vb script (whatever you like), which can monitor changes in a particular folder (and its subfolders) like e.g. this one. On every event, you run the appropriate git-command. The same applies in the opposite direction - you need to monitor changes in "main repository" (your file server) and pull changes from there. You launch the script once and keep it in the background ... it should behave like dropbox.

If you do not like git, you can do the very same thing with rsync. You loose some of the strengths of git, but the script may be a bit more easy to implement.

(Even dropbox does not sync instantly, there is always a slight delay. Usually, you do not recognize it.)

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