Goodbye Chronosync, Hello Dropbox8

One of the most inconvenient things about working on computers is keeping all of your data files current.  I have my main workhorse, the 24″ iMac, and the Macbook for taking it on the road or doing presentations.  Both are set up almost identically as far as server and software configurations.  The hassle comes when I’ve been working all day on a project from my home office, and then I get a call to drive up to the main office 2.5 hours away.  Then, my work files have been updated one one machine, but not the other.  Sometimes I’ve made changes to a number of projects, and it’s hard to keep track of which files to copy over.  Usually I would fire up Chronosync, and run it on my “Sites” folder so both machines would be up to date.  If I remember. Now with Dropbox, none of this is necessary – everything just stays up to date automagically.  There is a trick to getting it to work this way.  

One of the limitations of Dropbox is that it will only sync files that are in the Dropbox folder on your hard drive.  That doesn’t do much good if you don’t do all of your work in a location outside of the Dropbox folder, like most people do.  I have established a system that I’ve developed over the years, and like many people I try to make things work with MY system.  In my system, the “Sites” folder in my home directory is home to all of my work – my day job and my freelance.  Coldfusion looks there for hosting files, on both machines.  It just works very well for me, and the thought of relocating all of that into a subdirectory of some other software’s folder is just not that cool.  Enter the magic of symbolic links.

Symbolic links (symlink, soft link) are very much like aliases or shortcuts, depending on what OS you’re running.  They act as an alternative doorway to a folder on your system, just as if it was the folder itself.  It’s like having two doors to the same room.  Symbolic links are still files though, and can be manipulated as such.  So, you could take one of your doors to the kitchen and carry it upstairs to the 3rd floor study.  When you open the door it still goes to the kitchen, thus saving the walking down all of those stairs just to get a sandwich.  You could also say that the wardrobe was like a symbolic link to Narnia.  The difference between aliases and symbolic links is that an alias (or shortcut) is just like a springboard TO a location, whereas a symlink is an actual doorway.

So how do you sync folders outside of the Dropbox folder, using Dropbox?  It’s fairly simple.  You will create a symbolic link on each computer with the same name and put it in the Dropbox folder.  Note: if you have a large folder, you will likely need to upgrade from the free 2 gig program to the 50 gig Dropbox plan. (If you Google around enough, you may find a way to get said 50 gig Dropbox plan for 6 months free, after you sign up initially by clicking on any of the Dropbox links throughout this article! Thus helping me get more space for referring you!  :)

1. Some people are not comfortable playing around in Terminal, so the easiest way to accomplish this is to download a free Finder plugin called Symbolic Linker and follow the directions to install it.
2. Create a Symbolic Link to your work folder (mine is the “Sites” directory.) Do this for each computer you want to sync your work folder with, and make sure you name all of the newly created Symbolic Links the same.
3. I recommend closing the Dropbox client on each computer for this step.  On each computer, move the newly created Symbolic Links to the Dropbox folder.
4. Restart the client on each machine.
5. Wait forever. (While Dropbox uploads all of your files to your space online.)
6. Test the process – go to your work folder the usual way you always do, and create a folder “Test Folder”.
7. Have a gigglefit when “Test Folder” shows up on each of the computers you set this up with!

There are a number of benefits to doing this, other than always having up-to-the-second changes available on all of your gear.  Dropbox keeps versions of files online, so if you need to retrieve something that was accidentally deleted or changed, you can do that.  Also, there is a slick iPhone interface to your Dropbox online, where you can at least view everything that you’ve done.  When you are out on the road and don’t have an Internet connection readily available, everything will be saved normally and when a connection does become available, your files will be synced up immediately.

I have not only done this with my work folder, but my “junk drawer” folder on my desktop for random stuff, as well as my stock art and music compositions folders so I always have the latest and greatest available to me, automagically.

Download Dropbox Here!
Download Symbolic Linker Here!