Your files, your way: See what you want. Sync what you need.

The attraction to cloud storage is undeniable. A near-infinite resource at our fingertips to store the mountains of personal and professional data that we humans have become extremely adept at creating. As users gleefully rush headlong into the cloud storage era, pushing up anything and everything they can, new challenges are being encountered. How can the vast cloud be effectively utilized within the finite medium of a local computer?

File Virtualization with sync

File Virtualization is the method of representing a file system structure without needing to have everything exist locally on your computer. When you add sync to the equation this solution becomes a compelling means of working with structures that cannot exist locally. Browse everything, but have nothing cached locally until you need it.  Microsoft’s changes to OneDrive on Windows 8.1 showed users the power of this type of solution, until they took it away in Windows 10 … :(

File Virtualization with sync is extremely useful, but it is a solution that will start to break down at scale. Tracking changes across a vast structure, even without local caching, can render this solution unusable or so delayed and out of sync that its utility is severely reduced. As your dataset expands, the percentage of data that you actually need to focus on shrinks. Why spend cycles monitoring and tracking storage structures that you don’t care about, especially when there is a good chance that nothing is happening there?

Progressive Sync

Progressive Sync is the evolution of file virtualization. The premise behind progressive sync is that you do not need to have visibility into every nook and cranny of your storage at all times. Instead, you need visibility into specific areas of your data. These areas can change dynamically, depending on your immediate need, so on-demand collapsing and expanding of the visible structure needs to be available.

Not using progressive sync is a bit like trying to engage in conversation with your best friend by talking to everyone you know, simultaneously. It is going to be very slow, utterly confusing, and ultimately result in a big a waste of time and energy. Focusing on that single conversation with your best friend removes the confusion and irrelevant information and allows you to prioritize for the task at hand. Communication is quick, precise, and meaningful. This is what progressive sync does for you and your files. Engage (sync folder), discuss (sync files), disengage (unsync folder), repeat.

Progressive sync is the only solution available that can allow you to efficiently use near-infinite cloud storage within the constraints imposed by today’s devices.

Sync, the way you need it.

odrive offers progressive sync for all of your storage. You choose what you need to see. You choose what you want to sync. The ability to effectively map the vastness of cloud storage to your tiny local device is available to every odrive user, for free.

When you first start using odrive you will see all of the storage you have linked available as .cloudfx stubs in the root of your odrive folder. A double-click will expand that folder, browse you into it, and sync all the the files at that level according to global auto download limit you have set.

Simply browse through the file system to expose the directories you want to see. Tweak the auto download limit to fine tune what you need synced. Utilize the “sync all” feature to bring into view an entire directory structure. Use “unsync” to collapse a specified structure, removing it from view and allowing you to focus on your next priority.

Using all of these features together gives you ultimate flexibility for utilizing and managing your storage. See what you want and sync what you need with odrive.

To read more about odrive sync:

https://medium.odrive.com/sync-differently-b993694e1544#.y8823rsvw

https://medium.odrive.com/unsync-is-the-missing-link-to-cloud-storage-539493c384c1#.egwnn2gpq

What is Progressive Sync?

Building sync is really, really hard.

When we started building sync on Oxygen, we ran into a lot of challenges along the way. How can sync work smoothly when there is a ton of data? How can it still be easy and usable without adding a million configurations to your settings? How can we make it just “work” without creating additional obstacles to manage all the different stuff you are syncing?

We created Progressive Sync with the mission to let you sync a lot of things quickly and in the most effortless way possible.

It’s unlimited - sync as much as you want 

Typically with traditional sync, you are limited by how much physical storage space you have. In other words, you can only sync as much as your hard drive can fit.

But with Progressive Sync, it is unlimited and you can use it to sync as much data as you want. The key with Progressive Sync is that it doesn't automatically download entire folders or directories right away. It is progressive because it only “syncs as you go” - it will only download the folders you are browsing and not everything else at the same time.

So on odrive, a .cloudfx is an unsynced folder stub. Once it is synced, you can click through and view or edit everything inside. 

Similarly for files, unsynced files are displayed with a .cloudx stub. A synced file on the other hand, has a normal extension and a check mark, letting you know the file is local and available. 

It’s automatic - it always syncs what you want

There are some applications that give you the option to do selective sync, so you can manage your settings and change your configurations to figure out what specific folders you want or don’t want.

We took that one step further with Progressive Sync and made it automatic. It syncs as you browse, so you don’t have to configure anything. Double-click on the files and folders you need and we will automatically sync it for you, so it’s seamless as you interact with the system. 

Progressive Sync also prioritizes what you want at the moment over what might be syncing in the background. If you right-click to sync a file, and there is already a folder with tons of other stuff syncing at the same time, we will re-prioritize the sync jobs to sync the file you want first, so you don’t have to wait.

To help save on bandwidth and disk space, odrive will also skip the large files until you choose to sync them. That way your odrive stays fast and doesn’t bog down your network.

It’s flexible - sync what you want and unsync what you don't

You can choose to sync just a file or a whole folder with one-click. Not only can you sync, but you can also unsync anything you don’t want. Done working on a project? Easily unsync the whole project folder through the right-click. Unsync will remove the files from your local computer without deleting them from their original storage location. You don’t need to configure anything either. We will continue to show you a stub of the anything that has been unsynced, so if you need it again in the future, just double-click and they will instantly sync back.

It works with everything!

Because we just want to help you get all your sh*t together.

As we develop progressive sync, we created a foundation that allows us to extend our sync model beyond Oxygen to other content storage sources as well. That’s really how odrive was born – we built a really awesome sync platform to sync everything.

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t work with absolutely everything everything... yet. But we’re getting there. We’re adding new apps all the time so you can really #synceverything. Right now you can use odrive to sync Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, Oxygen Cloud, Facebook photos, Instagram, Salesforce, Gmail, FTP, WebDAV and even your file servers. You can also link multiple accounts if you have more than one for some apps.

We’re always in the process of adding more stuff to sync – so if there is something you want to sync, tell us! As long as there is a high demand and there is an API, we will try our best to make it happen for you. :)

- Julia

To read more about odrive sync:

https://medium.odrive.com/sync-differently-b993694e1544#.y8823rsvw

https://medium.odrive.com/unsync-is-the-missing-link-to-cloud-storage-539493c384c1#.egwnn2gpq