Replacing Dropbox with BitTorrent Sync | Hacker News Reader

Replacing Dropbox with BitTorrent Sync

jeff.noxon.cc

104 pointsingve52 comments

My experience with BTSync was not a very good one. If you try to sync a large number of folders (As in each folder as it's own share) then it eats up a ton of CPU/RAM. It wouldn't be as big of a deal but with the lack of selective sync that was the only way that I could implement my own selective sync.

The other big hangup I had was I want to be able to browse my data from my phone but not keep a full copy of it there which is impossible with BTSync.

Lastly I find their attempt to act "Open" laughable. The source is closed with vague hints that they might open it at some point and to use the API you have to REGISTER with them. To control software running on your personal machine from your personal machine you have to get an API from them. I am at a complete loss as to why this is needed.

I will not be using BTSync again and have been recently looking at Pulse (previously Syncthing) [0].

[0] https://ind.ie/pulse/

I imagine they are in a tough spot: how will they ever make any money off this product if it's fully open source? The whole point is that it needs no central server.

Thanks for the link to Pulse, it looks very compelling. Have you encountered any significant hurdles with it?

I have not done more than look at it so far but I heard good things about it when it was still called Syncthing. As for making money off OS code there are a number of companies doing it (Free code + paid services). BTSync could offer help to enterprises setting it up internally, they could offer a cloud to sync your data to (encrypted), they could offer pro-features (like some stuff Dropbox offers). The whole point is that it needs no central server but the sheer existence of an API key means there IS a central server that this all relies on...

> I imagine they are in a tough spot: how will they ever make any money off this product if it's fully open source? The whole point is that it needs no central server.

Every day we, as well as general consumers, pay money for someone to run something for us because we don't care to run it. I can run a mail server. But please, please please, take my money to do it. I like to sleep, I like my mail to work, and I like to work on more exciting projects.

Bittorrent should open the code with a license that permits them to run a service they can charge for, but anyone else can use for free.

Doesnt the GPL allow that

Yes, presuming the above was not meant to include "... that other people cannot charge for".

You're correct. Thanks for adding that.

I really want to like syncthing. The problems I have had with it are..

1) Difficult to set up as a service on Windows, so you don't have a command window in your task bar all the time. I want this thing to be fire and forget, not in my face all the time and setting it up on all my PC's, my wife's PC's and my kids PC's, I don't want a lot of extra steps and 3rd party solutions just to get SyncThing to be a service.

2) I had some CPU hogging issues on my Ubuntu boxes that forced me to disable it.

I did not know they changed their name to Pulse. That explains why I'm getting email from a Pulse mailing list suddenly.

Hmm, I wonder if it will suffer from the same issues as BTSync if I try to sync a large number of folders... I will be running on Ubuntu but that does suck that you can't run it as a windows server.

I haven't used syncthing/Pulse at all, but have you tried using srvany to set it running as a service?

I use NSSM to run it as a service. It is an extra step, but it's easy and I never have to touch the service again since pulse/syncthing can update itself (restarts automatically) :)

http://nssm.cc/

I've been using SyncthingTray for keeping syncthing's GUI footprint to a minimum, it seems to work quite nicely: https://pulse-forum.ind.ie/t/syncthingtray-for-windows/586

I made the same experiences. BTSync basically killed my Raspberry Pi 3 times by using 99% CPU, forcing me to hard reboot. The mobile App was really cool, but recently it's just buggy and neither download nor upload work anymore (On iOS as well as on Android). A while ago, even the desktop app became unreliable, causing me to ditch BTSync altogether. I'm currently using Owncloud 7 and I'm very happy with it (File sync in Version 5 was unusably slow for me), however I'm keeping an eye on Syncthing/Pulse as I prefer decentralized solutions.

I've been using btsync for a long time. I have seen high cpu or net utilization, but it was because of a changed name on one of the computers that were syncing. The other instance was still trying to connect to the device using the old name. The solution is to delete the synced folder and reestablish it under the new name. It does not need to recopy the data, but it does need to reindex.

(Original blog post author here)

I had similar experiences with the earlier alpha/beta releases using a ton of CPU/RAM and having a ton of other issues, but lately it's been working quite well. I sync a lot of files, over 30GB, and Dropbox and Google Drive did a spectacularly poor job with that kind of load as well.

The iOS app for BTSync absolutely lets you browse your shares and download individual files. Otherwise I would not be able to use it.

My cloud server is a g1.small on GCE, and I run Sync inside Docker on that instance. The same server also runs a bunch of other crap, and it's far from resource constrained.

About once a year I went through the exercise of "let's try replacing Dropbox with something" and this time, with BTSync, I have been able to finally get rid of it, with the exception of a few mobile apps that rely on it.

I agree it could be more open, and I'm always on the lookout for a better solution, particularly one with similar encryption capabilities. If you haven't tried BTSync in a while, perhaps it's worth another look.

Sync still has room for improvement, but it does seem to be constantly improving.

I was using Sync as recently as last month. I just opened the iPhone app and it looks like now you can add a folder but not sync the data to your phone which is a huge improvement however the iPhone app is still a steaming pile of shit IMHO. It froze up on me 3 times while I was trying to browser through my non-synced folder and I had to force quit (iPhone 6+ no other apps running).

Also I find the web/app interfaces to BTSync to be extremely laggy or contain stale data. On my MBPr (late 2013) it took a little over a minute to launch (well it "launched" right away but the web interface showed a loading screen for a minute, I have ONE folder synced) and the UX is terrible. I'll click something and a few seconds later it will open, I'm constantly wondering if the click registered or if BTSync is just being slow. In my experience the web/app does not seem to save my settings on which columns to show which is quite irritating. Lastly as I mentioned above trying to have BTSync sync 300+ folders brought it to it's knees and I can't even load the web interface to remove folders so that it's usable again (On my Ubuntu media center).

As for the API key there is NO VALID REASON why I should need an API key to access something I host myself, none. Period. Exclamation point. I had to apply for an API key before I could start scripting BTSync and the first thing I did with scripting was to add all my media folders for shows to BTSync and it fell over and died. If you just want to sync a handful of folders it might work fine for you but when it brings my beefy media center to it's knees something is really wrong. Another gripe I have is the documentation for BTSync is woefully out of date and flat out incorrect in some cases. Once you manage to get an API key there are no instruction on what you do with said API key. Do you add it to each request to the BTSync API? No, you actually put it in a config file for BTSync itself which I only found out after scouring the internet and BTSync forums for help.

BTSync has failed me multiple times and I'm done wasting my time with it. I'm glad it works for your but trying to use it for ~10TB of data is pipedream. To be fair Syncthing (Pulse) may be no better but I already like them more because they are more open whereas BTSync feels like a bait and switch waiting to happen IMHO.

For the record, it is definitely possible to only sync the files you want to on your phone - it's what I do. And as an anecdotal data point (FWIW), I've been using it since the Dropbox debacle, with a pretty large data set on weak machines and it's been solid.

Having said that, I completely agree with the open source thing, and am waiting for a good enough OSS one to jump ship.

But for anyone wanting to leave Dropbox, I can say at least my experience was a pleasant one (it's really nice to not have to worry about usage limits, or war criminals).

He doesn't want to selectively sync only certain files with his phone. He wants to browse the available files and then on demand download that file. This is a common use case for me also and something that dropbox supports pretty well.

That's what it does.

This must be something newer then because as early as a month ago I could find no way to do this. That may be failing of their documentation however I clicked every button/icon there was in the mobile app and found no way to do it. I can see now that by clicking the icon to the right of the folder name I can choose to have it "Auto-sync" which I assume means the data is stored on my phone but it's still confusing.

I use BTSync and I love it.

BUT BTSync is an Orange to the Apple of Dropbox and company. Dropbox and such is CLOUD BASED. BTSync is DRIVE BASED AKA you can't log onto some web page and get your files.

My Likes:

1) I have 4 work computers 2 personal computers and 2 laptops with BTS and it works great.

2) I just share folders based on my 6+ year old file server structure. All my file are available with whatever file structure I want on any of my devices.

3) Syncing my pictures from my desktop to file server is automatic and FAST on my local server.

4) My mobile devices I can pick and choice what files I want and download into any folder I want. (I have podcast available only on YouTube. I download the audio and store it into my podcast folder. Those files are automatically sync to my podcast program and are avilable. If I have a ton of books I can pick and choice what book and store it into any reader app (Amazon, Google, etc))

5) Super simple sharing of massive video files for editing. I have a friend I help with some video edit and audio processing. I have a raw and a cleaned folder and I just place the finished files in my cleaned folder and they go ONLY to my client's computer directly and not some website. Awesome way is that the raw is read-only on my side and cleaned is read-only on his side. That way it is clear who did what and mistakes (Which always happen) are clearly under the control of each side.

Yep, I use both because each is well-suited to different things.

For a small number of critical files and documents I absolutely want a remote copy of I have Dropbox (this is also where Dropbox's versioning comes in handy), while for all my large folders with stuff that's non-critical or already remotely stored I have BTSync, as well as for temporary and ad-hoc sharing.

I have to agree. I've been using it a while and really like it as well. I agree with what others have said I wish it was open source. I haven't found anything that works as well as it does.

I use SpiderOak for all my cloud backups. I've been using BTSync to keep my cell phone photos backed up to my desktop and then that folder gets backed up to SpiderOak. So far it has been working well.

> There’s Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Bitcasa, SpiderOak, Wuala, Transporter, and I’ve missed a bunch. It doesn’t matter because they’re all pretty bad, and nearly all have the same problem, which is that any data you upload can be decrypted by the provider. In the event of a bug or a breach, anyone could have access to your files.

Both Wuala and SpiderOak do end-to-end encryption, so this statement doesn't apply to them. All their servers ever see is encrypted blobs.

Wuala seems to be the only encrypted file sync service that does team sharing though, which is a requirement for me. Does anyone know any alternatives?

Yup. I've been using SpiderOak since Condoleezza Rice joined Dropbox, and it works fine as a drop-in replacement for Dropbox, at least for my personal files.

Bitcasa also does zero-knowledge encryption. We're working on collaboration, but I don't have an ETA.

Without the code being Open Source, I consider the "encrypted" feature incomplete.

>it’s different and better

I'm a huge fan of (the idea of) BitTorrent Sync but it's very bad software. Very early on I tried it and found it would eat my files sometimes (lost, corrupt or old versions). Recently, hearing it's now in stable I gave it a shot. I lost files again. If it works for you fine but I've found it to be very buggy.

I'm almost certainly an edge case, I just migrated off BTSync. I was using it to automatically back up my docs/code/photos etc from my laptop to my low-power NAS, but the CPU overhead was just not worth it. (NAS was frequently pegged at 100% CPU dealing solely with BTSync).

Switched to using lsyncd instead, and works a treat!

That said, BTSync was fantastic when it worked, and Syncthing looks incredibly promising, too.

I've currently (slowly) migrating from Dropbox and BTSync to Syncthing. I'd say you might have a glitch in the matrix if BTSync is running that high without any active transfers.

I'm completely switched over to Syncthing/Pulse or whatever they're calling it now. I have no trust for a proprietary "cloud" with my data.

Would love it if Pulse had the option to encrypt the stored data (currently it only encrypts during transmission), so it could be used on untrusted hosts.

Yeah, definitely. It would be a lot easier to have multiple redundant copies of my data if I didn't have to worry about securing each one.

It's one of the main reasons I picked Duplicity for backup.

On my (already battery-starved) laptop, it would always suck up 100% CPU for a few minutes on a fresh boot, and then occasionally pop up now and again.

On my (PowerPC!) NAS, it was constantly using lots of CPU and RAM, although I have a feeling plenty of that was caused by swapping to disk (NAS only has 128MB). I love the fact that BTSync have the forethought to provide a PowerPC client for people with outmoded NAS's like mine, just disappointed it was still too heavy to work reliably.

I'm in the same situation with the OS X client. I was using BTSync + Arc to essentially match Dropbox's feature set, but in the past couple of months BTSync seemingly lost its mind with respect to CPU usage. It would routinely hit 100% and would always show up on OS X's "Apps Using Significant Energy" list. I had to shut it down so often that it ultimately wasn't worth it. I switched back to Dropbox and abandoned any sort of privacy once again.

As other commenters already mentioned, BitTorrent Sync is closed source.

An alternative, open source, multi platform (even mobile) solution is Seafile.

No, that is not an alternative as Seafile is server-client, where as BTSync is client-client (peer2peer).

syncthing.net is an alternative to BTSync.

I am using btsync to handle saving android titanium backup backups off-phone and to easily push podcasts from my personal server to my phone and every other device. It also keeps my keepass synced between devices. It has solved so many problems it's not even funny.

I have generally enjoyed using BT Sync since about June and haven't run into some of the CPU problems other are mentioning. I use BTSync primarily for files that I was never really comfortable leaving my machine-- paper I scan, my work files, etc-- but would like to work on from multiple machines and have multiple copies of.

However, I have had at least two cases where a file somehow didn't completely sync and it was corrupted, totally unrecoverable. I am left feeling that versioning is the killer Dropbox feature that BT will never replace. I'm not sure what I'm going to do... I'm still using BTSync for a lot of stuff, but it has lost its trust.

I thought BTSync had an "archive" for previous versions. Or is that just deleted files?

Either way, it seems like it'd be possible to add (at the expensive of additional complexity and disk usage)

I believe there is an archive folder per machine, but it only stores files replaced at that machine during 30 days...

I haven't ran into corrupted file issues myself, but I have been fighting "Out of Sync" for awhile and will probably switch to something else myself if I can find something similar.

> and nearly all have the same problem, which is that any data you upload can be decrypted by the provider.

The author includes SpiderOak under this statement. Whilst I understand that they can decrypt anything if you give them the password through their web interface, I was under the assumption that this wasn't possible if you never downloaded any of your files through their web interface.

Am I under a false assumption here? Is there something I am missing?

The same goes for Wuala.

> The author includes SpiderOak under this statement

Is it really? From your own quote:

> and nearly all have the same problem

(emphasis mine)

"nearly all have the same problem, which is that any data you upload can be decrypted by the provider". SpiderOak and Wuala do client-side encryption iirc.

I believe CrashPlan does too.

I wrote a BTSync Docker (https://github.com/merlin83/btsync-docker.git) a week or two ago to help backup and synchronize some of data across several of my machines in the cloud and behind a NAT.

The biggest benefit so far is that it just works, even for machines behind a NAT.

"...nearly all have the same problem, which is that any data you upload can be decrypted by the provider. In the event of a bug or a breach, anyone could have access to your files."

Hey folks. Thomas from IDrive Online Backup. We are of the few cloud services which uses private key encryption so only the user can decrypt their data.

>On my wishlist: Hosted plans for folks who need the always-on aspect of cloud storage and can’t roll their own

What do you mean, can't roll their own? You can just leave an old PC with BTSync on all the time. Problem solved.

And while we're at it, let's solve world hunger by getting all the people who can't afford bread to eat cake instead :P

I use BTSync, it just works, no need to worry about capacity any more, just make sure I don't sync laptop with huge photos folder.

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