Another FolderShare Release — Getting Scared
Posted on April 22, 2008
30 Comments
Back in March, the FolderShare folks released a new beta release of the FolderShare client. I was excited until I realized there was no support for Windows 2000. That made me nervous, but I had hoped it wasn’t a big deal.
So far, everything has been ok though. I’m running the older version of FS on a Windows 2000 Server and it’s syncing just fine with the new version on a Windows 2003 server.
However…
Today another new version was announced. Something in that announcement has definitely grabbed my attention:
To bring as many people as possible up to date, we’ll start prompting users to upgrade this week. When the time comes, you won’t be able to sign in until you update.
(bolding mine)
Well, that’s going to cause me some issues. Major issues. Why? Because I’m a big dummy and have FolderShare as part of a production process at work. Yeah, I know that was dumb, but it has worked so well for so long!
I suppose I can go back to a robocopy based sync, but that’s not as “real time” as FolderShare is. It also takes over a half hour to run on the two servers and get ‘em in sync. (I last got in depth about robocopy in 2005).
Anyone have good reliable “real time” sync options to suggest? I’ve had PowerFolder suggested in the past, but have yet to try it…
Tags: beta, foldershare, robocopy, windows-2000
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Well, I feel your pain. I’m not entirely sure that I like where Foldershare is going, but I’ve been addicted to it since the very beginning… yes, when ByteTaxi had it in beta! The changelog for it isn’t very exhaustive, but I don’t know why exactly you SHOULDN’T be able to run it under Windows 2000. So, what I’ve done is removed the installer restrictions (using Orca) to allow it to install on a Win2K machine. I’ve not had a chance to try it because I don’t have any Win2K boxes running now. I won’t be able to try it in a virtual machine until next week, but I’ll post it for you to test if you’re brave
Let me know how it goes!
Get it here: http://www.yarascavitch.com/uploads/Foldershare_v14.0.1331.0415_for_Win2K.msi
Cheers!
Running Win2k SP4 Workstation. FolderShare.exe is nto a valid Win32 application. Installation is successful, but when trying to run the shortcut in Programs, it errors out. I also tried using Thinstall in XP and install on Win2k Worsktation but got similar error.
Your Win2k version erased the existing Foldershare files but did not create any new ones. My shortcuts do not work, and I cannot find any new installation of Foldershare.
Now I have found a new foldershare.exe in Documents and Settings. It has the brand new time stamp, so it was just installed. Windows says it is an invalid program, and it will not run.
Thanks to those who gave it a try! I’ll take it down for now and see if there can be another solution for Win2K once I get a virtual machine going next week. I’ll keep you all posted. In the meantime, keep strong
For now, I’m resorting to setting up an FTP server and using BeyondCompare on the other workstation to synchronize my files. Really, I’d love a freeware FolderShare clone that can perform delta-change updates and only involve the computers involved (no server on Microsoft.com required
) Pinch me, I think I’m daydreaming again!
I can fall back to robocopy… but the beauty of FolderShare is the real time sync. That makes it so much better than running a 15 minute log job every so often.
*sigh*
But yeah, looks like we’ll need to find alternatives.
Good effort Blake — hopefully you can get a “simple” hack going there…
Chris, my wife has been using Sugar Sync & seems to be doing a good job – free trial available, but it’s not freeware…
I tried Sugar Sync on my Win2k machine (2.4 P4), and it was too slow to even function. Beinsync was much faster, but it is also not freeware.
Okay, so the FTP Server & BeyondCompare was not a good idea. Having one side of the computer do all the comparison analysis was not a good idea.
So, I explored some more and started using rsync. There’s one called DeltaCopy which is an rsync GUI for Windows. I can synchronize using two passes – one from the server to client. And another from client to server. The -u makes so that newer files on the other computer is not updated by rsync. –progress gives you a real-time progress report. It is a little nerdy and not real-time, but it is working okay for me. rsync is free, fast, and thoroughly tested.
rsync.exe -v -rlt -u –progress “/cygdrive/F/music/” “user@server.com::music/”
rsync.exe -v -rlt -u –progress “user@server.com::music/” “/cygdrive/F/music/”
Good effort from Blake.
I think that what we really need is a patch for the old version (2.5.10) so that it doesn’t whine about being too old. Perhaps that can be done by skipping the version test, or by sending a more recent version number to the server.
I really believe the the old client can still use the FolderShare server, because until I rebooted one PC it remained connected to the server even though other of my PCs were already giving the “too old” message.
Has anyone tried hex-editing their old version of the FolderShare.exe so that it shows a more recent version?
Also, I need an older installer file for Windows 2000.
I tried looking for the version number in hex but couldn’t find it for sure.
2.5.10 can be found somewhere here:
http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=FolderShareSetup-2.5.10.msi
The one I have is:
660480 bytes
CRC32 = 1AE694AD
MD5 = 42540FF7620371C0519A884774C9B746
SHA-1 = 706F0E004330E5806138C52598DF3650AA5CA00D
Thanks for the installer! I tried to install the Win2k friendly version and even the installer checks the server for version number. That also tells me this version is too old. I can look at the packets using WireShark, but I’m not a programmer so I wouldn’t know how to forge a newer version number. Does anyone know if Proxomitron could be used for such a purpose?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron
FolderShare is good (I’ve been using it for 2 years) BUT:
The upgrade to Windows Live look presented a couple of problems: 1) you couldn’t see the file location/defn of the libraries you created, and 2) performance/reliability dropped off.
The Achilles heal of this application is the 10,000 file and 10 shared library limit – Microsoft listen up!
For now, I’m trying out PowerFolder and SugarSych – both look capable, the latter feels better though.
Regards,
Justin
Finally some people doing something about FS & Win2000! A thread I need to keep up with
Yes, but you need not read this entire thread, because none of the attempts at a solution for Windows 2000 yet works.
One workaround is to use Netdrive, an obsolete program by Novell. Find it by searching netdrive.exe on the web. It allows you to permanently map local drive letters to FTP directories. You can then use any of the dozens of available file syncing programs to sync each FTP directory with each local drive. Of course, this requires that at least one of the computers have an FTP server on it.
NetDrive is now called WebDrive. Synchronization via FTP is very slow if you have a lot of files.
Anyway, after using the RSYNC method for several weeks, it worked well enough, but it didn’t handle file conflicts very well. For a non real-time file sync program, its the fastest one I have used.
As a last resort, I installed Virtual PC 2004 (freeware) and installed XP on it. Unfortunately, FolderShare only wants to sync with Local Disks.
Now, I am trying BeInSync. They want $150 for a life-time account, but I may take the plunge. The software seems to do the job. It just doesn’t give you the real-time status like FolderShare does. Whatever, if I’m going to use Win2k, I may be forced to use this.
SugarSync requires XP, so its a no go for Windows 2000 users! PowerFolder is like a gui for rsync. Its not real-time and syncs every 5 minutes.
I tried Beinsync for a while on a p4 1.7 box. It also was very slow and pinned CPU at 100% for long periods. Not a good solution.
BTW, Netdrive is free. Webdrive is not.
It is not really clear to me if Netdrive is free. At one time you could download it from an unsecured .EDU site, but that site has since closed that page to the public. Just because can you download it off the web does not mean it is free.
> Beinsync
I am discovering it has a nasty habit of hashing the entire file to verify if the local and remote file are a match. It is taking a lot longer to sync 300GB even though both local & remote files were previously mirrored.
I finalized my software to PowerFolder (PF) on my Windows 2000 machine.
Pros of PowerFolder:
1) Sync via delta-changes (like rsync). Makes synchronizing small changes to big files much faster!
2) p2p – connect directly with your peers, no Microsoft server is required
Cons:
1) Costs money. Purchasing Pro is not instant like their web site claims.
2) Runs on Java, uses more memory than FolderShare
3) Global queue vs library queue. If you have big files in front of the queue, the other files may have to wait a long time to synchronize.
4) You may need to forward your ports in your firewall on both ends which may not be easy for some users
I upgraded my Windows 2000 to Windows XP using an old XP upgrade disk I had purchased from Microsoft. FS tells me that this version of the OS is still too old. Is there a way around that?
I bought PowerFolder to try out but it is pretty complicated for me and took a long time to sync (mirror) the files. I am not really comfortable with it.
I would like to use FS but hate to install a new OS. Thanks.
Powerfolder is expensive. It is $30 for one computer, $54 for 2 computers, and more for each additional computer. Each computer connected to the sync requires a paid license.
Perhaps you need to update to the latest XP service packs for FolderShare to work. PowerFolder has its own quirks, but it has been working fine for me. After having obsessed over a solution for weeks, I’m glad I don’t have to think about it. Since my work machine is Win2k and home is XP, my home machine runs both FolderShare & PowerFolder to sync with the other computers I have.
After a lot of research, I realized there aren’t many solutions available for Windows 2000. PowerFolder is the closest thing to FolderShare I could buy that works on Windows 2000.
@Don – I’m with Sun in thinking that you probably need to be at least up to SP2 with the XP install.
As for the article… For my larger sync I’ve started to migrate off the win2k server to a Windows 2003 server. Not quite the timing of when I wanted to do it but c’est la vie.
For my smaller syncs (under a couple GB) I’ve been experimenting with DropBox and Windows Mesh… (I have a recent article up on those). They work a bit differently (with online storage and easily disconnected syncs) but have great potential.
One alternative that works on Windows 2000 is Crashplan.
[...] point in December, Microsoft’s FolderShare is going away. I used to use this a lot until they dropped Windows 2000 support. Now, instead of FolderShare, we’ll have Windows Live Sync instead (see details) In December, [...]
Crashplan is interesting, but its not a two way remote sync service/software. It makes encrypted backup files on the other computer.
Anyway, after using PowerFolder for one year, I finally dumped it. I paid for a license, but its a Java memory hog and its been finicky about wanting to work reliably.
So, now I am on to using GBridge (freeware) which has a remote Windows folder sharing feature. Then I’m using Allway Sync (freeware) to perform the synchronization on the local folder and remote folder. It works really well and keeps track of deletes so it can be propagated to the other machine. As far as I know, this solution only works for two computers, but both software can run on Windows 2000.