I know in the past, like some years ago, I tried syncing projects across varioius machines with Google Drive and had issues with projects getting corrupted. So, I went back to Dropbox, with which I’ve never had an issue. But. Dropbox is getting more and more expensive, and I get a chunk of Drive space with my subscription to Gemini, their AI engine, so I’m considering moving back.
Is anyone doing this over Drive? If so, any issues?
i quote myself!
I have done it for years. And I mean YEARS! For sure at least ten years, maybe 15 years now. I sync across three machines about 10bg of projects. Typically about 40-50 clients and about 10-20 projects per client.
I’ve never had an issue with Dropbox syncing. Ever.
Hi @TemplateRepo,
Until you do, and if you don’t have a recent backup when Dropbox decides to meddle in the project files, that’s gonna cause some hair pulling out of frustration.
I’ve never been in an accident. Yet, I still wear a seatbelt when I drive.
iCloud Drive remains safest, as Apple’s file system knows how to handle bundles (obviously).
Cheers,
Erwin
Well of course I have other back ups! FFS I’ve been doing this for nearly 25 years! Why are you taking this off in the direction of backups when it’s about syncing across devices?
My experience has been Dropbox: Rock solid. iCloud: Total disaster. Google: Mixed. But, I’ve not tried iCloud or Google for a number of years, about five I guess now, so perhaps they’ve improved. That is the point of this post.
I use iCloud for storing projects, and it’s been working fine for me!
Thanks, but I’m not going back to iCloud, but I am interested in recent experiences with Google Drive.
Sorry, not used Googly Drive in recent years, I’m sure someone here on the forum must be…
That’s what I’m hoping for.
Well, I’m “FFS” talking about backups because I help at least two people a month here on these forums with corrupted project files due to cloud storage, who do not have backups.
Sorry to have offended you - but I was only trying to help.
Cheers,
Erwin
Not offended me, just trying to keep it on-topic.
UPDATE: I’m updating this thread in case others find it in a search.
TL;DR: Google Drive is not a reliable syncing solution for my needs. I’m sticking with Dropbox.
I have been testing Google Drive’s sync capabilities with the aim of moving over from Dropbox, and for me, it’s been a complete failure.
I tested it on my two backup machines: an M1 Mac Mini and an M1 MacBook Air.
I started by setting up the Mac Mini, copying 275 GB of files from Dropbox to the local Google Drive folder. I set everything to “Make Available Offline.” It took about three days and four restarts to finally sync everything. Once it was synced, however, it appeared to work correctly. When I opened a RapidWeaver Classic (RWC) project, worked on it, and saved it, the new version synced to the Google Drive cloud without any issues.
After a few weeks, I decided to introduce the MacBook Air.
First off, I could never get it to sync successfully. The initial attempt to make all files available offline failed time after time. I then switched to streaming files (online-only) and made only select folders available offline. This method worked, so long as the folders I was syncing weren’t too large.
Eventually, I had enough folders synced to test syncing an RWC project file between the machines. Here’s what happened:
I opened the project on the Mac Mini, made an edit, saved it, and closed it.
The changed file synced to the cloud just fine and reasonably quickly.
However, as soon as Google Drive tried to sync the new version from the cloud to the MacBook Air, it deleted the project file from the MBA entirely. It didn’t even have the decency to sync a corrupted version; it just straight up deleted it.
The new version was still safe in the cloud, so I manually downloaded it, but the file was corrupted and wouldn’t open.
So, from my experience, it’s safe to say Google Drive does not work well. It completely messed up the RWC project (which was somewhat expected), and on top of that, the syncing process itself was incredibly messy.
(Don’t worry, Erwin, I had backups!)
Hope this helps someone.
We’ve just put together a document about syncing projects between Macs. The only sync service we can recommend at this time is iCloud Drive.
I’ve had issues in the past with iCloud. I will revisit it though. Cheers.