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Comment by kmfrk | Hacker News Reader

Be great if they could bounce back from using a third of my CPU on basic indexing.

Dropbox is unusable for me due to it pegging my CPU at 100%. And yes, I've opened mutiple supports tickets over the year.

The problem is I put my Outlook .pst in my Dropbox folder. When I have Outlook open, which is nearly the entire day, Outlook puts a lock on the .pst file.

Instead of Dropbox ignoring that file and coming back to it later - it's just gets stuck in some kind of infinitely loop trying to synch the locked file and can't. Resulting in 100% CPU usage.

And when you moved your PST file out of the DropBox folder it works fine?

Yes, when he stops saving the file he cares about it works.

Ok, I'm confused, just store the PST elsewhere. The location can be changed.

Sounds like he should make a copy to dropbox, if he wants a copy backed up.

Can't backup an open file after all.

This is just how computers work.

He is not complaining that the file can or cannot be backed up, and Dropbox is no backup service by the way.

He is complaining that their software hangs on open file instead of doing the sensible thing and not using 100% cpu until the lock goes away. That has nothing to do with "how computers work".

Certainly a flaw in Dropbox, but one that can be easily worked around I think. Don't put the .pst directly in the Dropbox folder. Instead set up a scheduled task/cron job to copy it into Dropbox every few hours.

The Outlook .pst file plays notoriously bad with backup and synching in my experience. I set up CrashPlan for a family member once, and when I followed up a few weeks later it hadn't backed anything up in weeks because it was stuck on the .pst. In this case it was because the .pst was so huge and kept changing so frequently. By the time it had been uploaded for off-site backup, then it had changed and CrashPlan would start uploading it again. CrashPlan wasn't smart enough to prioritize other files in between, probably because it puts the most recently changed files in front of the queue or something.

I think CP prioritizes smaller more frequently accessed files. That said, you could use a different "back up set" for PSTs so that they not interfere with the backup of files in the other set.

Maybe we could let them know so they can fix the issue (maybe you did already)?

"And yes, I've opened mutiple supports tickets over the year."

I have the same problem. I basically use Dropbox as my work folder and put all my files in there. As a developer I have millions of small files. It takes 2-3 weeks to sync the dropbox from scratch (currently 285gb of dropbox files). And my CPU is regularly pegged at 100%. I basically have to switch Dropbox off when I'm not plugged into power on my Macbook Pro in order to conserve battery. I've contacted support several times, and their response was basically "don't".

I'm on one of their top plans (2TB). What's the point in having such large plans when the number of files you have causes the whole service to break down?

Been searching for a good alternative to Dropbox. Something that would be CPU efficient, safe, secure and reliable. I also use their packrat plan (saves a history of every file ever), which is nice too.

Any other HN readers have any alternatives? I really just want a plug and play solution, and not have to roll my own.

I don't trust Apple iCloud for one bit as they've been quite inept at running cloud services. I've tried Google drive with poor results too.

I eventually settled on Apple Time Machine. It backs up to a home NAS and a handful of drives at each office. The NAS can be configured to back up to S3 automatically.

Yes, why not use git for the code files?

I have a single command on alias that goes and checks out all my git projects, and does a bit pull on any existing. Can switch between Computers in like 30 seconds. And it's all free git on bitbucket.

Git is much better way to deal with small files. Dropbox is ok for large files or nontechnical users.

I think all the consumer-grade backup and sync services are designed for a relatively small number of large files, such as high-res photos, songs and videos.

I have about 300K files (250GB total) in my 1TB SpiderOak account. The UI has always been atrociously slow, but backup speeds are okay when most files are static. Things get more interesting when I check out another branch in git and touch a few thousand files at a time. As for sync, well, I've all but given up on editing a file on my desktop, opening my laptop, and expecting the updated file to appear anytime soon. If I really need to sync a file immediately, I put in in my Dropbox (free account, almost empty).

The initial sync really sucks. With smart sync things are much better, because you can easily pickup projects to download to your machine. With large amount of files and folders the regular selective sync has quite bad ux.

Unfortunately smart sync is only available for business subscriptions (probably because it makes it easy to put more stuff to Dropbox than you have disk space)

I use an AWS Windows instance as a VDI. CodeCommit/SVN for code history and AWS snapshots for backup. This allows me to hop from physical computer to physical computer knowing that I always have everything with me. My physical computers are normally Macs but I mostly only use them for web browsing and as RDP client.

What I like most of this VDI setup is that, since it is a thin client setup, my computers last many years without becoming obsolete.

honest Q --- I'm not trolling I swear --- is Apple's iCloud any better in this regard? I know it's not cross platform... but if one is using Apple stuff exclusively, is the iCloud Documents in its current incarnation usable? Asking honestly

Yes - the current incarnation and ONLY the current incarnation - I.e. iOS10 and Sierra, is bulletproof and fast.

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