Opening FM from dropbox?

[David Nelson]

I guess this is the best place.  I have a group of files which I work on all the time.  Excel, my FM stuff.  So it is easy to keep them in a WORKING folder and be sure everything is saved and closed and then move the folder to dropbox.

 

Once I am home on my other computer, I open dropbox.  I've been moving the WORKING folder to my desktop and continue working.  But sometimes I forget and open the copies in dropbox instead.  It seems to work fine but is it really safe or can it damage an FM file?

 

Thank you for considering my post.

[IdealData]

An absolute NO NO.

 

It will crash and burn.

[Wim Decorte]

It is NOT safe, you have no control over when Dropbox will decide to sync the file and there have been many reports of it going wrong.

[argwallace]

Question for clarification...

 

What if you are the only user and close the document each time and wait for it to update across your devices, and then do the same from a different device? Would this make any difference to the absolute "NO NO" scenario.

 

Thanks.

[Josh Ormond]

The problem is that dropbox scans and tries to sync that file when it is open. Most of the time, the file is locked, and Dropbox moves on to the next file.  But the problem is dropbox is still trying to accessing the file. That can cause things to go awry in the file.

 

If the data has any importance at all...don't do it. And if the data didn't have any importance, why are you keeping it? 

[David Nelson]

That is exactly what I needed to know.  Thanks guys.  I take it that it is safe to use dropbox to move a file and download to my other computer.  Or should I just use a flash drive?

[Josh Ormond]

I save backup copies to dropbox and let it sync those.  The key is for the file NOT to be open that is actually being synced/scanned/probed/etc.

[wayneg]

I recommend that you continue to copy already synced files out of Dropbox onto your local computer and open the file there to avoid any syncing issues.  If a sync begins while you have your file open, it may create duplicates which will be difficult to manage especially when you have a lot of files or multiple duplicates.  It may be tedious to open each version of the duplicates to determine whether it was the last file that you worked on.  So to avoid all of this, copy and paste your file over to your desktop then open it from there.

 

I'd also highly recommend you perform regular Windows or Time Machine Backups (OS X) because it's not safe to rely solely on Dropbox or any single service for file storage.

 

If you have FileMaker Server, it would be ideal to host your database solution on the server, setup a backup plan, and remotely access your solution to work on it.  Hope this information helps.