Thursday, January 08, 2009
Tech: Dropbox Sync External Folder
Dropbox is probably my favorite Backup, File Sharing, Data Organization software/service. It automatically backs up and syncs your files to the net and between systems ( Mac, Linux, and Windows ). The default behavior is to only backup/sync files within the My Dropbox directory. However, you can symbolically link a directory outside of that folder and Dropbox will follow the links to back things up.Now I think about it, this is an obvious 'feature'. Symbolic links can be easily created with the "ln -s" command on OS X and Linux, but how do you do it in Windows?
Windows
Use either the JUNCTION utility from Sysinternals, or the MKLINK command built in to Windows Vista and Server 2008, for example:
junction "C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Dropbox\DesiredFolder" "C:\Path\To\DesiredFolder"
mklink /D "C:\Users\Steve\Documents\Dropbox\DesiredFolder" "C:\Path\To\DesiredFolder"
Or, if you prefer a GUI, install Link Shell Extension.
Use SyncToy to echo changes from another folder to your Dropbox folder. This keeps 2 copies on disk though.
Be careful on Windows though:
Windows may not update changes to symlinked files automatically.
Changes made to a junction point-linked file/folder on Windows may not update the Dropbox mirrored copies until you close and restart Dropbox. See http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=583 for more details. Recommend keeping the real files in the Dropbox folder and symlinking into Dropbox rather than the other way around.
Follow the link for more specific instructions.
TipsAndTricks/SyncOtherFolders - Dropbox Wiki
Article Link posted by Edward at 5:30 PM
