I am looking at using either iDisk or Dropbox as a cloud storage service. Can anyone tell me if Dropbox significantly impacts notebook battery life and heat production with an aggressive syncing process? Is iDisk lighter on system resources since it is more integrated with the OS? Storage size isn't a concern, and I don't mind paying for iDisk if it is a better option.
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Dropbox Efficiency
- Thread starter AzureCloud
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DropBox only uploads when files in the DropBox folder are changed.
It should be noted that as with any file uploading service (this applies to iDisk and Dropbox both) that you may not want to save all files to the Dropbox folder.
Some applications save their files as "bundles." A bundle is effectively a directory with other files inside of it. But to the user that bundle appears as one file. If you were to save some of these bundles to your dropbox or idisk and then edit them directly from that dropbox/idisk folder you have a potential risk of losing data.
Same goes for saving files to dropbox/idisk and opening them on multiple computers at the same time. It is best to close the applications and files and only use them on one computer at a time, or you risk losing data.
This is inherent in the design of Bundles. None of the cloud syncing services make this real simple to solve either.
Basically, I edit files on my machine in the Documents folder. When I need to copy things between computers, i throw it up on Dropbox, then copy it to the other computer's documents folder. Unless it's simply data like a pdf file. Those just stay on dropbox and are good.
hope this made sense.
That's because iTunes doesn't use a Bundle for its data storage.
You could still lose data though. The files will be fine, but you could mess up the library file which stores your playlists and does keep track of what files are in the database. Given certain scenarios you could easily corrupt that database.
Glad you haven't had any issues yet. But I'd still say you're lucky.
So neither of you notice any slowness/ loss of battery life when running Dropbox? I have read a few posts on Dropbox's forum about high cpu usage when transferring files around the OS (not actually into the Dropbox folder), but I didn't know if it was a widespread issue.
Dropbox is free, why not play around with it yourself?
I've never really noticed my processor usage when syncing via iDisk or Dropbox. I can say that for me, Dropbox is leaps and bounds faster than iDisk.
I've never really noticed my processor usage when syncing via iDisk or Dropbox. I can say that for me, Dropbox is leaps and bounds faster than iDisk.
You are right that I should give it a try, but I just wanted to get a feel for any potential issues before I committed myself fully to Dropbox. It seems like the consensus is that Dropbox is much better than iDisk.
The "consensus" is that Apple needs to buy Dropbox and replace iDisk with Dropbox.
Do you have anything concrete to back up what you just said?
Bundles aren't effectively folders, they are literally folders with files in. At the filesytem level, there is no difference at all between a bundle and a folder (view a drive with bundles on it in Windows and you'll see what I mean).
There's nothing more dangerous about using bundles in Dropbox than there is any other kind of file. Of course, if you have the same file open on two machines at once, you're asking for trouble no matter what kind of file you're using. Even then, Dropbox is pretty smart about dealing with collisions.
On topic: Dropbox is awesome, and very efficient.
This is specific to Scrivener but should give you an idea of what's happening. It isn't just Scrivener, it's any app that uses bundles.
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5295
Just as an contrary example, 1Password recommends Dropbox for synching and places its (your) data in a bundle/package in your Dropbox folder called 1Password.agilekeychain. It works very well too. But possibly there is a difference in how well different developers and/or applications use Dropbox and similar services.
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Again, nothing specific to bundles there. The issue with Scrivener is that it updates its files so often that *any* online storage system will struggle to upload the files fast enough to keep them in sync. That's not a problem with bundles, it's how that particular program deals with files.
Again, bundles aren't special - they're just folders. Want proof? Make a folder, give it a name with a .app suffix. The system will suddenly think it's an application! Of course, you can't launch it because it's just a folder.
A counterpoint to your argument are programs like 1Password. They use bundles, just like Scrivener. However, because 1Password was written in a better way than Scrivener, it works just fine with Dropbox - in fact, Dropbox is the reccommended way to keep 1Password in sync.
So, to sum up. There is nothing inherintly special about bundles that makes them problematic with online services. Saying that is silly, as they're literally just folders. The problem lies with specific applications and how they deal with files. In fact, applications with large monolithic files are much, much worse with services like Dropbox as the entire file needs to be re-uploaded when the tiniest thing changes.
Then you've mostly proven my point. That some applications that use bundles for their file format will have issues with Dropbox or any other syncing solution due to the nature of their data system in-app.
The problem with bundles is simply that due to the design of many applications that use bundles for their file format are likely doing so due to the sheer number of files they need to have to save the data easily. Thus, bundles will inherently have more of an issue with online syncing services.
Apps like 1Password work well because the saving system only alters a small number of files in the bundle on save. Other apps, which save more data to a larger number of files are likely to have issues.
Since you keep pointing it out. I know what a bundle is. Having written several mac apps, you learn that one pretty quickly.