Ideas and general discussion :: FTP Sync idea

Author: dariovolaric
Subject: FTP Sync idea
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 9:18 am (GMT 0)

Hi,

I have been using SyncBackSE for a while to keep files in sync using an FTP server. I like this more than Microsoft Live Mesh because I have lots of files and Live Mesh starts scanning all the files on startup to check what changed and that slows down my computer during boot. Instead I use SyncBackSE and schedule it to sync only once a week.

However, since I have tons of files and folders, it has to retrieve files from every single folder with FTP to check what files have changed. On top of that, the server does not support hashing so it has to rely on file date and size, and sometimes it has to sync tons of files that are the same in content but the dates are different (I turned of date check, but would rather have it rely on hash signatures).

So to resolve both of these problems, I thought of a great idea.

If the FTP server also has SyncBackSE running, it could generate the folder structure data and send it to the other computer rather than have the computer ask for the folder contents one by one for every folder using FTP commands. So instead of giving hundreds or thousands of command to generate the remote folder structure, it will simply get the complete list from the remote SyncBackSE.

I understand that it could be a problem to get both SyncBackSE copies to talk to eachother using a specific port because of firewalls, routers and other security that might get in the way. To resolve this, you could mark in your SyncBackSE profile that the remote server is using SyncBackSE and to keep an eye out for a specific sync file that will be in the root of the FTP server. So one computer will place a 'request' file on the FTP server's root and keep polling the remote FTP's root for a specific file (every few seconds or so), and the other computer will notice the request file and will be building a folder structure file and saving it in the root of the FTP folder. This file will be noticed, downloaded and used to check for file differences. Because SyncBackSE is also running on the remote computer, it can also create hash values for every file and add them in the sync file. To avoid having to re-hash all the files it can check and remember the file's modification date and size. If any of these changed from the last time it created a hash value, it will have to create it again.

free website software free writing software