Network folders not syncing

Bugs and issues
#1

Hello! - I ran into an issue and I’m trying to figure out if it’s a bug, or if the product was never designed to work the way I was expecting.

So, for starters, the reason I ended up using this product is 100% because it allows you to sync network drives to Google Drive. In my case, this is very important because I have TB’s of data that became difficult to manage on my machines so I eventually needed everything moved to a NAS. After installing Insync, I was able to setup my network drive and everything worked just as intended.

However, after using it for a while I am now noticing that anything placed in that network folder from a machine other than the machine running Insync will NOT get synced. If this is normal behavior, I can somewhat understand why it’s that way, but the problem becomes this…

  1. There is no option provided in the Insync application to rescan a specific folder for changes, or even to rescan everything if you wanted to pick up changes.

  2. The only way around this for me has been to restart Insync which forces it to rescan everything which results in my files being picked up. This is, of course, a crappy solution because it literally takes DAYS for my Insync to start back up and rescan my entire network drive just to find those changes.

Has anyone else encountered this issue? Any ideas on some viable workarounds?

Thanks!

#2

Hi Jason, would you mind sending in your logs along with the link to this post to support@insynchq.com?
How to find the log files

#3

Hi Jaduenas - So I have no issues with sending you guys my logs, but before I do I would like to know if what I am describing is a bug, or if it’s known that putting something in your Google Drive folder from a machine other than the machine running Insync will not trigger that folder to be synced.

I mean if it’s known to not work that way then (1) that’s extremely disappointing and somewhat defeats the purpose of allowing network folders, and (2) it would be a waste of time looking at my logs since there wouldn’t really be an issue at that point.

Let me know, thanks!

#4

My laptop is set up with three partitions, one for Ubuntu, one for Windows 10, and a third for an NTFS partition that I can see from either Ubuntu or Win10 depending on where I boot. I only run Insync on Ubuntu, which is what I boot into 95% of the time. My Google Drive is synced to the NTFS partition from within Ubuntu, when booted into Win10 it just looks like another drive. When I change files while running Windows 10, and then boot back to Ubuntu, the files do sync. Based on that I would say the files don’t need to be placed there while the computer running Insync is running… Does that make any sense?

#5

Yes, it definitely makes sense but it’s a bit different than my situation. Mine is something more like…

Computer A - Running Insync, with target folder pointing to a network share.

Computer B, C, D, etc. - Not running Insync, but have access to the same network share.

From computer A, if a file is created or edited in the Google Drive folder, then that change is detected and the folder is synced with the remote Google Drive folder. Ok, just what we want in that case.

Now, if computer B was to create or edit a file in that same folder (via the network share), computer A will NOT detect that change and the folder will NOT be synced.

In your case, when a file is changed in your Google Drive folder from within Windows 10 let’s say, that change syncs when you reboot back into Ubuntu. This isn’t much different than my situation if I were to restart computer A as needed. At that point any changes made from computer B, C or D would be picked up and synced. However, I’m not sure how fast your Insync starts up, but mine literally takes DAYS to load, sign-in and do a full sync (even when there are no files that need to be synced). It’s somewhat understandable considering its checking TB’s of data against a network share, but at the same time, it makes restarting to solve issues like this not viable.

It would be great if there were one of two things available.

(1) That Insync properly watches that folder and detects changes made by anyone and kicks off a sync.

and/or

(2) Built into the shell or menu system, where I could select a folder and tell Insync to force re-check just that folder (or something similar to that). This is not the greatest solution, but in my case would be a million times better than restarting computer A and have all syncing halted for days while it starts back up.

Hope that clarifies my situation a little better. Thanks for the reply!

#6

You can send log files back and forth all you want, but the problem and the answer are simple: You cannot sync Drive files to a local machine that does not have insync installed. Is there some reason you don’t have Insync installed on your other machines?

#7

Just some ideas:

Can’t you install insync on the nas? That would pick up all changes.

Have you explored the "insync force_sync " (don’t know if it works recursively on folders)?

One way to resync an entire folder from Google drive to local client would be to exclude it in “Selective Sync” and then add it again … HOWEVER, that would firstly delete the data from the local drive and then download it again … so might not be a good option.