![]() ![]() Since my wife, kids and I are usually on the same LAN, BitTorrent Sync allows us to synchronize our files much, much faster than Dropbox, even though both technologies support “LAN sync”. It’s almost like magic! Synchronization speed Now here’s what’s great-If I need an installer locally, I just double-click it, and it downloads in place! And when I’m finished with installer, I simply delete it in the Finder, and shortly thereafter I’ll see its “.bts” alias re-appear. You can see that on my MacBook Air, this folder contains a bunch of “.bts” files-which are tiny “aliases” to the original files stored elsewhere. Within that excluded BTVault folder, here’s a screenshot of my Adobe CS installers, as seen from my MacBook Air. Using this feature, I store my archived files (like software installers) in my “BTVault” folder, on an internet-hosted Mac (that I’ll discuss later in the “cloud copy” section). The problem, however, is that once you’ve excluded a folder via selective sync, it becomes invisible to the local host, making it difficult to get at that data when you ultimate need to.īitTorrent Sync also supports selective sync, but dramatically improves on the Dropbox implementation by allowing you to continue to see the contents of excluded folders locally, and-here’s the killer feature-also allowing you to access that data on demand! The Dropbox solution is to exclude that folder by disabling it in the “selective sync” settings. Say you have a folder of software installers in Dropbox that you don’t want consuming space on your MacBook Air’s SSD. But I like BitTorrent Sync so much that I’m happy to have paid, in support of its success and future development!) Better selective sync (I paid for the Pro version, and in the process of writing this article realized I could still be using the product for free. And if you can get by syncing up to 10 folders, it’s free! Sharing data with my kids, however, would have required purchasing paid Dropbox accounts for them, as our shared “Family” data exceeds the Dropbox free account level.įor $40 per year, a single BTS license can be used on multiple computers. To share data with my wife, without having to purchase a second subscription, required installing Dropbox on her Mac, but logged into my Dropbox account. Economicsĭropbox costs me about $120 per year. This feature is discussed later in the article. That’s because they are selectively “excluded” from my MacBook Air, to save SSD space. Speaking of BTVault and BTMedia, you’ll notice their icons look different. (The free version is limited to ten folders.) Here’s what my setup looks like.Īs you can see from the screenshot, I maintain six synchronized folders-three shared with my wife (BTConfidential, BTCabinet and BTDownloads), one shared with my kids (BTFamily) and two (BTVault and BTMedia) stored elsewhere. In my case, however, I wanted to synchronize data across multiple folders-some shared with my wife and others shared with our kids.īitTorrent Sync Pro ($40 per year) allows the synchronization of any number of folders. ![]() This article explains why.ĭropbox provides synchronization of a single folder-your “Dropbox” folder. ![]() A few months ago, however, I migrated to BitTorrent Sync (BTS), and haven’t looked back. Updated at 3:24 PM with additional comments from BitTorrent.For many years, I stored the majority of my data in Dropbox. Either one will synchronize files on various devices without requiring those file to be stored in the cloud first. You provide your own USB hard drive with the $99 Transporter Sync. The original Transporter costs $199 and comes with a 500GB hard drive. If you don’t need the high capacity of a dedicated NAS device, you might also consider one of Connected Data’s Transporter devices. A BitTorrent spokesman said while it supports differential updates, BitTorrent performs them differently than rsync.) (A differential update saves only the changes to a particular file or folder, versus creating an entirely new file with everything. BitTorrentīitTorrent Sync seems much easier to configure and use than the Linux rsync command, although both support differential updates. On the other hand, BitTorrent Sync does support versioning, where older versions of a file are preserved instead of being written over (a number is added to the file name each time the file is saved, and these versions are stored in a hidden folder). This requires a bit of tweaking if you want to share only certain files, or if you want to enable a one-way sync. And it does this without your needing to open ports on your router. BitTorrent Sync automatically reads and encrypts designated files stored on one device on your network, and then writes them to your other networked devices-be they other NAS boxes, computers, or smartphones. ![]()
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