Mirroring folder structure with aliases do not work (on Mac)

Bugs and issues Mac
#1

It seems that it is not possible to sync a folder outside the main Insync folder between two computers. At least with Mac OS (Yosemite). The proposed solution definitely does not work.

  1. I add the X folder to Insync using “Add to Insync” on computer A, and wait for sync to complete

  2. On computer B, after a while I find the X folder within the Insync folder

  3. On computer B, I quit the Insync app, move the X folder away from the Insync folder, make an alias to the moved X folder and put it within the Insync folder, where it originated, with the same name, then start the app again

What happens is that the original X folder is moved to the Google Drive trash, another (empty) folder with the same name is created in Google Drive and synced back to computer A. Lost all files (although they are still in the Google Drive trash, but need to be synced again on both computers).

Definitely not a solution.

#2

@gag I’m sorry to hear that the proposed solution did not work for you. I have however just verified that it works (on Yosemite) by doing the following:

  1. Let Insync sync a folder down, let’s say abcdef, from Drive to my Insync folder.
  2. Quit Insync.
  3. Move abcdef from the Insync folder to a new location. (What new location did you use? Was it on a different partition or drive from the original Insync folder?)
  4. Right-click abcdef in the new location, select “Make alias”.
  5. Copy the created alias file back to the Insync folder.
  6. Rename the copied alias file to abcdef.
  7. Start Insync again.

Did you perform any of these steps differently in your case? Would you mind trying out a new test folder to see whether it fails consistently for you?

If it does, kindly send us an email (support@insynchq.com) with the details and your logs attached. Thank you.

#3

Ok thanks. Yes, your solution works as expected, but can not be used for the user Documents folder (at least on Macs).

What I want to do is to sync my ~/Documents folder between two Macs:

  1. On the first Mac I select my ~/Documents folder and use the “Add to Insync” option
  2. On the second Mac i sync the folder down and quit Insync
  3. Now I can’t delete the ~/Documents folder and replace it with the ~/Insync/Documents folder. This is because MacOS refuses to delete the ~/Documents folder altogether, even if it is empty. So what I do is instead moving the contents of ~/Insync/Documents to ~/Documents, then deleting ~/Insync/Documents.
  4. I make an alias of ~/Documents, move it to ~/Insync and rename it “Documents”.
  5. I start Insync again

Insync does not consider the new Documents folder as the same one as before. So it deletes the original Documents folder from GDrive (which means that on the first Mac my ~/Documents folder becomes empty) and syncs everything from scratch (which means creating a new ~/Insync/Documents folder on the first Mac).