Storing a lot of files inside your Dropbox will also cause performance problems. Which means that paying for extra space (I do) isn't that useful if you intend to keep your git repos with source code there.
It has been like that for years, the company has made little progress performance-wise (instead we got useless things like photo-something-or-other-that-tries-to-access-my-photos).
I learned to live with it, because the advantages of Dropbox outweigh the disadvantages of a poor implementation. Dropbox is still a very good product, even if you have to pay a hefty price in CPU and battery life for it. I dream that one day someone will decide that performance is a goal worth pursuing and finally optimize the thing.
I have just under 150,000 files in DropBox and haven't noticed any performance issues. DropBox rarely shows up in Activity Monitor's first 20 CPU users (unlike MediaFire which is usually burning CPU for no reason and only managing 200 files).
Perhaps it's an OS difference? I am on OS X 10.11.1.
Git = not that.
>> mkdir projectname && cd projectname && git init
but not all of those projects end up on github/online repos.
Regardless, git is not backup, and dropbox isn't (real) versioning.
The only thing Dropbox has going for it is that somehow, everyone else is worse. Core syncing and client reliability is just trash across the board for all the other providers. But Dropbox is still infuriating.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Genera...
For instance, I can't exclude folders and extensions, which messes up my workflow a lot (e.g. I can't exclude .git folders)
People have been complaining about the AppData binary thing and the roaming profiles issue since Dropbox launched.
I thought that FINALLY, after they had launched Dropbox for Business, it would come with an announcement that they had fixed Dropbox on roaming profiles and started storing the binary properly.
Nope. Just a branding initiative. I managed to screw around with it enough to get it working on my profile, but I've been unable to repeat that success, even with admin access. So, so annoying. iTunes works better in a corporate environment than Dropbox does.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/505467/can-i-store-the-gi...
[0] http://aditya.vaidya.info/blog/2013/08/25/using-dropbox-and-...
Still impossible.
These guys can't even manage GIFT CERTIFICATES, I'm not surprised they have trouble with actual technical issues.
Then again no one is perfect. I've seen the green check mark missing from all my files in Google Drive at different times.
Most of us are complaining about services we use for free.
Speed of sync isn't much of a concern to me personally, I don't use Dropbox for big files. Reliability of sync is key for me, and for that I have never had an issue. Everything is everywhere, without exception. No conflicts or corruptions, period.
> Most of us are complaining about services we use for free.
I'll complain about a browser too. "Free" isn't an excuse to offer a crappy product. You're still making money off your userbase somehow.
It's also worth noting that the problems that exist with Dropbox, permiate all tiers. I'll use it, but I'd never pay for a service with so many issues unless I had a very good specific reason. For example, iCloud Sync is way worse but I'll pay for the privilege of being able to dump my iPhone photos online automatically.
Interesting thread.
I'm not sure exactly what happens, but my guess is that somehow an index in it's internal database gets corrupted and then it sits in a loop there for some reason whenever it hits that file/folder.
We have used Dropbox extensively in our office across Windows & OSX for at least 2 years and have had this periodically (and randomly) happen on some machines. Although I can't recall it happening in the last 6 months or so.
There was a period where it happened almost fortnightly to someone in the office and we almost swore off Dropbox to something else.
The above has always fixed the issue for us. YMMV.
I've never noticed a problem with Dropbox. Of course, I'm not running tools that show me battery consumption of apps and such on my Mac. Battery lasts long enough that it's never been a problem to look into.
I also had trouble with early versions of Google Drive. Maybe it's time to give it a try again. The problem I had was that drive thought all of my files had changed every day and started syncing the entire Google Drive folder again. I removed it and haven't tried it again since.
Support response:
The event you've provided shows and deletion of 12 files as well as an addition of 12 files. When this happens in the exact same event, it is due to a move or to renaming a folder 99% of the time.
To recover your correct previous versions of these files, you may be able to rename the folder back to exactly what is what named prior.
I've been bugging them about a solution to the file limit for at least a year with no response. I finally got a (public) response by tweeting at them. They said they would follow up with me and they never did. Even a "we can't fix this" would be better than the dead air I've received.
I really don't know how they intend to compete with the software giant's similar offerings if it's not via superior customer service.
For anyone not aware of the file count issue you cannot have more than ~300,000 files on dropbox before it totally falls apart. I was paying for 1TB of storage and using about 3% of it when it totally stopped syncing.
The limit is found here: /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches and defaults to 8K, not 300K, so I don't think it's the cause of this problem.
CONFLICTED copies in Dropbox drives me absolutely nuts, and should not happen since I never edit the files concurrently.
[0]: https://blogs.dropbox.com/mailbox/
[1]: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/20021...
I had to give up syncing some parts, because the problems would create a bevy of file conflicts.
Not saying that shouldn't be allowed, but you'd think the community manager would make it a point to take that feature right to the dev team. I know its not an easy fix, but definitely something that would immediately satisfy a large group of users.
Not to mention from a 'green' perspective the amount of CPU cycles, Wi-Fi packets, etc that could be saved from fixing this.
I still use it, but Dropbox's refusal to do anything about this problem (or even acknowledge that it exists!) is mostly what's prevented me from taking the leap to a paid account.
It's too bad, because Dropbox's speed, simplicity and (at the time) minimal performance hit was what I originally liked about it compared to other sync solutions. Now it's missing all three.
(I will admit that we have performance issues when users sync more than 100,000 files; but that's more due to fundamental limits of what you can do in a user-mode application.)
Perhaps Dropbox is just trying to trap deleting / moving / renaming the Dropbox folder? That's something that's tricky to do; and we had to disable our technique to do it because it had too many side effects.
http://imageshack.com/a/img908/1838/YHDwZ6.png
I only keep Dropbox because they automatically stick my screenshots in a folder and sync it.
Though, I've never, ever had a perf problem with it.
I submitted my resume years ago and never heard back. I wonder who they hired instead..
Other than Guido, of course :)
