Software to help share files between home/work?

[superboyac]

Is there a special software out there that can be used to help share files back and forth between home and work?  Let's say you're working on a document.  You make some changes at work, but you want to work on it at home also, so you want the file at home to get updated also.  Furthermore, you don't want to carry around a USB stick or anything.  I'm sure there is a kind of specialized ftp software out there that can help do this.  Any suggestions are appreciated.

[mwb1100]

Most of the file synchronization tools support FTP, some also support SFTP and/or FTPS for secure transfers.  there was a recent, long thread discussing SyncBackSE and Super Flexible File Synchronizer:

https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=10657.0

SyncBackSE does not support SFTP yet, with the developer looking into possible future solutions, but no firm commitment.  I don't know what the SFFS story is for secure transfer.

If you have a synchronization tool that you like that does not support FTP or SFTP an alternative is something like one of the following that will map drives to network storage:

• SFTPDrive (http://www.sftpdrive.com) - $40 - per user license
• WebDrive (http://www.webdrive.com) - $60 - per computer license, with an activation scheme
• Jungledisk (http://www.jungledisk.com) - $20.  This does not use FTP, rather it uses Amazon's S3 service.  The license is per-S3 account (essentially a per-user license).

If you're dealing with a work computer situation, one thing to test before you buy is support for proxy transversal if you need that at work.  In my situation, I was unable to get SFTPDrive to connect to some hosts.  Jungledisk works fine (but it only has one host to deal with).  I have not tried WebDrive.  If you buy SFTPDrive from their site, you get a free, non-expiring 3GB SFTP account at joyent.com.  So for about the price of a USB drive, you get about equivalent storage that you don't have to keep in your pocket!  The support forums for both SFTPDrive and Jungledisk are actively monitored by the developer.

I'm using Jungledisk right now for a situation similar to what you're talking about, and it works great.  I do have to pay Amazon a whole $0.08 (that's eight cents) a month for the S3 transfer & storage fees.

[superboyac]

Thanks, I remember that thread, but couldn't find it because I was using the wrong search terms.

[sri]

https://www.foldershare.com/

[alxwz]

• SFTPDrive (http://www.sftpdrive.com) - $40 - per user license
• WebDrive (http://www.webdrive.com) - $60 - per computer license, with an activation scheme
• Jungledisk (http://www.jungledisk.com) - $20.  This does not use FTP, rather it uses Amazon's S3 service.  The license is per-S3 account (essentially a per-user license).

-mwb1100 (December 12, 2007, 05:17 PM)

Wrt WebDrive, there once was (don't know if it still exists) a version licensed by Novell that was, IIRC, called NetDrive, which was a free download. It was identical to WebDrive. Maybe you can still find it. It worked with FTP (don't think it did SFTP) and WebDAV.
I think it was meant to be a client to a Novell server product, but I can't remember.

I forgot to mention: One of my mail providers, gmx.net offers 1 GB of WebDAV storage for free. Only available from Germany, but there should be lots of similar offers out there. That said, I don't use it anymore due to not being (officially) allowed to install software on my machine at work and not wanting to cause a lot of traffic on the network. So I went back to a USB stick on my keychain.

Edit (2): Now I noticed that NetDrive had already been mentioned in some posts by nudone, and a post by justice said that NetDrive doesn't work in Vista.

[f0dder]

If you're dealing with ASCII text files, subversion 

[justice]

I'm using jungledisk and because it mounts amazon s3 as a system drive you can use all the regular sync tools with it. For example I use Super Flexible File Synchronizer which means I can use it as a backup or directly open files from that drive in the associated application. It also means you won't lose your data. Jungledisk has its own autobackup functionality with multiple versions if you like.

I tried foldershare in the past but was not happy waiting for it to synchronize as I dont keep both my home pc on all the time. I've tried sync programs with my ftp space but I didn't like having to wait for the synchronization to complete, I want to be able to open my document at any time during the night and know that it's up to date. Jungledisk does that for me. However if you're directly open a 30mb zipfile and it happens it's not in the local cache jungledisk uses then it first has to download the whole file before you can open it, making windows explorer unresponsive. (on xp at least). It's expected I guess but it's only niggle for me.

[ppass]

I recommend SyncBackSE. I sync most of my folders between my Home and Work PCs using a USB HDD. On the USB HDD, all my files are compressed and encrypted (this is an option of SyncBackSE), so if I lose the USB HDD or it gets stolen, file contents cannot be displayed (however, all file names and modification dates are not encrypted, this is one of the limitations).

The developper is quite open and active on its forum . There seems to be a new major version (5) in the works, but still no official release date.

There is also an option to keep versions of files (you can specify how many versions of each file you want to keep, and for how long).

I am not sure, but you may be able to use a FTP instead of the USB HDD.

[Chris]

After much testing and looking for a suitable solution, particularly one that was free I chose Unison http://www.cis.upenn...du/~bcpierce/unison/. It was a bit fiddly to set up, but I have it synchronising my documents and favorites at home and at work. It only moves the parts of a file that has changed and not the whole file. This is based on rsync.

Chris
Adelaide
Australia