I abandoned Dropbox, can I include path with symlink to sync with Insync?

#1

I am running Arch linux and use bash for scripting.

I have abandoned dropbox and am going to sync everything to google drive with Insync.

The problem is dropbox only syncs 3 devices on their free plan and now I have 5 devices.
So Dropbox has to go.

On my device I have
~/google_drive/* synched by insync, and
~/dropbox/* synched by dropbox, this is outside the google drive path, obviously.

As I said I am abandoning dropbox.

I tried making a symlink to the dropbox folder, from the google drive folder, so that folder is synched by google drive, but that does not work.
Google drive does not respect symlinks.

I tried to make a hard link That does not work either.

Can anyone think of a way to not have to move all the files from the dropbox folder into the google drive folder.
Moving the dropbox files to a different path to the existing path is a lot of work because of all the directory paths written into script files that reference the path.

#2

Hi Kes,

You can try the following:

  1. Create a Dropbox folder in your Google Drive, on the web interface.
  2. Do not sync it to your desktop using InSync.
  3. Merge-Sync your Google Drive/Dropbox folder with your Dropbox folder in your home.

InSync will track and sync that folder to Google Drive, yet it won’t move and stay separated from your Google Drive folder.

#3

Thank you.

Can you expand on that.

I have looked into it and it is not obvious how this can be achieved.

Also I do not see a merge-sync command in insync.

#4

Can you expand on that.

Of course!

I was talking about Local Selective Sync feature actually. I can’t find the help pages and I’m currently away from my primary workstation where InSync runs, so I can’t create you a small how to guide, sorry.

So, create Dropbox folder on Google Drive, doesn’t local-sync it, then using Local Selective Sync, Sync your ~/Dropbox to $GOOGLE_DRIVE/Dropbox folder.

1 Like
#5

Hi! The help page for the local selective sync should be here: https://help.insynchq.com/en/articles/3220036-selective-sync

Thank you for the assist as always, @bayindirh!