Windows Live Sync Has Issues

I previously wrote about how Live Sync was very very good. I haven’t tried many applications for syncing, but the integration with Live ID and the background syncing worked well for my uses (backing up and copying files to and from laptop to pc).

All was good, until I got a message come up one day while editing a website. “The folder “blah” has more than 20,000 files in it, so we wont sync it anymore”. Now, the service allows 20 folders with 20,000 files to be synced. This sounds like a lot of files right?? Not to someone like me! Because the service looks at the amount of files, it doesn’t matter whether the file is 1kb or 1gb in size. As most html files don’t go above 15kb mark, this seems silly.

It sounds like they were thinking along the lines of most popular computer usage, storing music files and photos, which can be about 4-10mb in size (1000’s of times larger than my html/asp files). This is no use for more advanced computer users who want to backup their data as well as carry it around to where ever they want to go.

Adam’s solution: Use internal LAN while at home or on the same network as the computers which have the 20,000+ file folder to sync the files. This way the data doesn’t have to fly over the internet to get to the machine sitting by your feet. While at work or out of the LAN, queue up the files to sync when you get home.

Although, there may be 20,000 files to be synced over the internet, but each file isn’t changing at the exact same time! This means the bandwidth being used isn’t that great, its just a relatively small lookup table being queried every 10mins.

I think the method of using the wired/wireless local area networks that most homes/businesses have these days would be a great improvement on the technology. Microsoft already own a application that is solely built around this. “SyncToy”, which I talked about below. Combining these services would be of great use to a lot of people, and would make backing up locally and syncing files while on your home network much better as you wouldn’t be using up your allotted ISP bandwidth for that month.

Quite a long ramble, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out, and I don’t have a degree in computer science! (Yet!)

Comments

  • Ed

    srsly… how have you managed to get 20,000 html/asp files in a folder?

    Is the html being generated for you or something?

  • adamm255

    I have no idea, just that i have dreamweaver note folders.

    But i honestly dont know how theres that much. 1 maybe 2 thousand at MOST!! Thats images, pages, etc etc etc. Ive got a lot of work in there!

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