Skydrive application sync is creating multiple copies of files

Hi,

You mention that you were using Mesh previously. Were the files in question on both computers when you started syncing with the SkyDrive?

If you had the files on both computers, then what is likely happening is they have different data (such as modified/accessed time) that indicated the files are different. If you have different files with the same name, that are put into the same folder on different devices... the syncing will have to handle it without data loss.

The duplication would then be an unintended consequence of uploading the 'same' files on different devices.

To get around this, when syncing files for the first time, it would be better to sync them from one device and let SkyDrive handle bringing them to your other device, than to put a copy into SkyDrive manually on both your devices.


If, however, you did not put the files into your SkyDrive folder on each device separately, let me know and we will follow up more on this issue.

Thanks for using SkyDrive!
-Justin

Thanks for the reply Justin, although that seems a bizarre way of performing the initial sync with Skydrive - if I have two machines that I want to sync files with, I have to remove all the files from one of the computers to start with, even if the files are identical (accessed times notwithstanding), and if they were already synced using Mesh. It might be an idea to add this information to the "Skydrive for Mesh users" page.

If the files are indeed the same, we should not duplicate them.

Can you verify if the two sets of files have the same modification date and file size?

 

You should be able to find these in the details view of windows explorer, and/or under their properties.

 

If they do match, and you are willing to help us figure out this issue, let me know and I will have a Forum Moderator contact you about getting your SkyDrive logs.

 

Thanks!

I've since been through and erased the duplicates that were created as part of the syncing, however the sync operation is still ongoing (36 hours later, whereas Mesh was finshed syncing in a couple of hours).

Interesting.. can you tell if it is making progress? The system tray should show how much has been uploaded/downloaded.

Simply accessing a file does not require a resync, only actions that modify the file will cause it to do that.

 

Are you syncing the same files using both Mesh and SkyDrive? That may potentially change the way the files are syncing, the logs would know more.

You can find the SkyDrive logs at %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\SkyDrive\logs

I can't guarantee they'll be very readable :)

If you notice something out of the ordinary or are still having trouble syncing, let me know and I will see if a forum moderator can request the logs from you. We can then take a closer look.

Yes, it's definitely making progress albeit very slow but, I reckon I might know the reason why. 

Cheers Justin

I think I just ran into this issue with a Visual Studio web project. Was getting errors when running the site indicating a manifest was mismatched with the dll. I kept deleting the compiled dlls and recompiling and eventually they should show up again. I thought this was a VS/project properties problem but it seems like the culprit might be SkyDrive making duplicates of files to preserve mutual edits somehow?

 

Deleting the /bin/ folder contents in explorer and waiting for SkyDrive to finish syncing before recompiling solved this problem for me.

Interesting... Is your project stored in your SkyDrive, and hence the build location is also in your SkyDrive?

I can see where that could be an issue if you're making changes on multiple computers and they have not been fully synced. If you look in the BIN folder, do you see your computer name appended to the files?

Also, how are you running the website? Are you launching it through Visual Studio? If so, it will compile each time you try to launch the page.

SkyDrive would have to be fully synced before you build, otherwise if a file is already created with the same name and is currently in use, it should show up as in use during compiling. If you have a file in use, then you won't be able to overwrite it.

One option I can think of for now would be to point your project to a build folder outside of SkyDrive, since it's already changing frequently and in theory don't really need to sync it. (Though in the project settings be sure to choose a path that would be valid on all the machines you compile on).

The other, like you said, would be to delete the DLLs, in which case you could then recreate them safely when you build.

-Justin