If it is an important file you may want to tweak your Dropbox settings to see if it changes the download speed to the better. Dropbox is by default set to unlimited download rates. If you are experiencing download rates in the 5KB/sec to 20KB/s range and have a Internet connection capable of handling a multiple of that, then you may want to try the following configuration change to see if it changes your Dropbox download speed.

Open the Dropbox configuration. You do that with a right-click on the Dropbox icon in the system tray and the selection of Preferences from the context menu.

Switch to the Bandwidth tab there. Dropbox lists the settings for the download and upload rate in the menu. The download rate is by default set to “Don’t limit”, the upload rate to “Limit automatically”.

The trick here now, as reported by the Italian blog Computer Acquisti is to configure a custom download rate instead.

The author of the original article suggests to enter a rate that’s between 50% to 75% of the Internet connection’s bandwidth. Users with a high download rate, say 20 Mbit or more can alternatively add fix values, e.g. 1000 kB/s

Users who report less than optimal upload speeds may do the same for the Dropbox upload rate to speed up uploads to Dropbox this way.

You can also try and switch the proxy settings from Auto-detect to No proxy (if you do not use one) under Proxies.

Please note that Dropbox won’t necessarily use all of the bandwidth assigned to the download tasks. Users may see an increase over the initial lower download rate however. You may also want to consider throttling your upload speed rate in the case that it gets maxed out constantly when transferring files to the Dropbox server. This may have an influence on the download rate.

Dropbox recommends doing a speed test to an east coast server in the US to simulate download and upload speed to their servers.

Are you using Dropbox? If so, what is your downloading and uploading experience?

The chance that someone may look through your files may not be that enticing to you, especially if you have uploaded sensitive information to Dropbox.

Encryption is the best option if you want to sync sensitive or confidential files with Dropbox. Encrypted files can only be accessed by authorized users who have the right key to decrypt the files.

I have demonstrated in the past how to encrypt files that you sync with Dropbox with the help of the Open Source software True Crypt (sync confidential files with Dropbox). The process was lengthy, technical and not very comfortable, especially for users who have never worked with True Crypt before.

SecretSync is a standalone software programmed in Java that offers a more comfortable file storing solution. It is basically an add-on service for Dropbox that will automatically encrypt files for you before they are synced with Dropbox.

First time users need to create an account on first run. A username and password is mandatory for the account creation. Security can be improved further by adding a passphrase to the account.

All those information need to be entered on every computer that Secret Sync is installed on, to gain access to the encrypted files on those system.

Secret Sync creates a new folder on the user system and links that folder to the Dropbox folder. All files placed inside the Secret Sync folder will be encrypted before they are moved and synced with Dropbox.

Files moved or copied into the Secret Sync folder are encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption. Files are only decrypted on the user’s computer systems, and not on Dropbox.

Anyone accessing the files directly on Dropbox only gets garbage from that point on because of the encryption that is in place online. These files can also not be opened on systems where Dropbox is installed, but Secret Sync is not.
Dropbox would sync those files normally, but since they remain encrypted it is not possible to access them on those systems.

The core advantage of using Secret Sync over a manual solution is that it is way more comfortable to use. All you need to do is install the software, create an account and you are set to go. This does not take longer than a minute at most.

It is even easier on additional systems as you only need to supply your username, password and optionally the passphrase that you have configured during the first installation of the service.

All files that you move into the Secret Sync folder on your hard drive (the one outside of the Dropbox folder) will be automatically encrypted by the application before they are synced with Dropbox.

You get nothing if you try to open the files on Dropbox directly, while they open fine on the local computer.

This method has a disadvantage though that needs to be addressed. Secret Sync can only do its magic if the program is running in the background. The Windows beta version is using roughly 30 Megabytes of RAM. You may also need to add Java to the equation as it needs to be running as well.

The program runs silently in the background with no user interface to stop or start it. If you want to close the program, you need to kill it in the Windows Task Manager. This may change considering that this release is a beta version and not the final product.

Secret Sync is only available for Windows currently, but the developers have promised that Mac and Linux versions will be offered soon on the program homepage as well.

You can download the Windows release from this page (via Lifehacker)

So what do you get in this new release of the popular file hosting, management, syncing and sharing solution? Some of the highlights include lots of bug fixes, reduced resource usage and performance enhancements. If that’s not enough for you yet to give it a try look below for detailed release information taken directly from the announcement.

Our highest quality yet – When you’re shipping software to millions of people, a problem that affects even 1 out of 10,000 is a big deal. And the most important feature of any file syncing software is that it just works. This release represents thousands of hours fixing problems people should never have to think about: invalid file names on Windows, weird Unicode normalizations, Word and Excel file locking, abnormal symlinks hierarchies, case sensitive file systems on Mac, TrueCrypt support, …the list goes on. Whether you’re using Dropbox for work, school, or play, we’re confident that today’s Dropbox offers the best file sync experience out there.

Huge performance enhancements – Dropbox 1.0 is strong enough to sync your entire digital life yet still lightweight and fast. We completely re-architected the client-side sync engine to optimize the response time, scale, and resource consumption. Keeping track of millions of files can require lots of memory if not done properly. This version reduces memory usage by up to 50%. It’s speedier and more efficient when handling big changes to your Dropbox while ensuring that smaller changes remain quick.

Better user experience – We’ve completely redesigned our initial setup wizard on all three platforms to make it easier to get started using Dropbox. The preference menus are more organized, intuitive, and snazzy. We’ve also rewritten our Mac OS X version to only use Cocoa so Dropbox looks and feels much more native on the Mac. This also brings down the Mac download size by 20%

Selective Sync – If you have a netbook or a computer with a tiny hard drive, syncing your entire Dropbox isn’t always a great idea. You also might not want certain files on your home computer to pop up on your work computer. Selective Sync solves these problems! You now can choose which folders get downloaded to which computers. This saves you time so you don’t have to sync stuff you don’t need. To learn more, head to our help center.

Extended Attribute Sync – Syncing resource forks have historically been a pain for Mac users. In case you don’t know, resource forks are a secret area of a file that certain applications (like Quicken, Quark, and OmniGraffle) use to store important data. Most sync programs today completely ignore these forks, which results in a corrupted file on the other end. But worry not! Resource forks and other extended attributes now work great with Dropbox. Hooray!

Some of the more interesting additions are TrueCrypt support, a 50% memory reduction in Dropbox 1.0 and selective syncing for situations where you do not want to sync everything.

Dropbox is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple Macintosh and mobile devices.. New users and existing user sneed to download Dropbox 1.0 from the official website. (via)

There was not an easy way until now to synchronize folders that are not placed inside the Dropbox. Some users managed to get this working with symbolic links by moving the folder into the Dropbox and creating a symbolic link to the original location.

This operation has now become easier with the Dropbox Add-on Dropbox Folder Sync.

Dropbox Folder Sync basically automates the process as much as possible. The add-on will move the selected folder into the Dropbox and create a symbolic link to the original folder so that the files can be accessed from there but are also synced in Dropbox.

The program comes with a simple graphical user interface and Windows Explorer integration.

The gui can be used to change the Dropbox folder setting and to select a folder to sync with Dropbox.

More comfortable than the gui is the Windows Explorer integration which can sync a folder with Dropbox by right-clicking it and selecting Sync With Dropbox from the menu.

Dropbox Folder Sync is a program for Windows that requires Dropbox to be installed. It will also install the Junction Utility from Sysinternals which will be used to create the symbolic links. The download is available at the Dropbox website. (via Caschy)

This can be helpful for instance for webmasters or coders who design their websites and projects offline and want to automatically synchronize the updated files to a web server.

A second purpose could be an automated backup of files on a website to another web server or a local computer.

Core Features:

• supports UNIX, Microsoft, IBM and Novell type FTP servers only new or changed files are transferred
• console type application that can be easily executed from various schedulers and batch files
• FTPSync is intended for computer experts – it has no user interface, so users must know how to edit standard Windows INI files. Synchronization can be configured on the fly from batch files or other applications, making it a convenient tools when sync authomation is required.

The configuration of the file synchronization process or backups are configured in standard Windows ini files. It is recommended to take a look at the extensive documentation to configure the program properly.

Three demo configuration options are included in the download. They demonstrate many features and parameters of the program.

An alternative to FTP Sync is the popular software WinSCP which can also be used to automatically synchronize data between local computer systems and servers. Information on how to create a batch file can be found in the winSCP forum.

FTP Sync can be downloaded from the developer’s website. (via Donation Coder)

The configuration of a new job is relatively easy. It begins by selecting the source and target directory. The subdirectories of the selected folders will be displayed in the subdirectory section after pressing on the refresh icon in the middle of the two windows. It is here that the folders for the file sync are selected.

Create Synchronicity supports three different file synchronization methods, namely left to right mirror and incremental or two way incremental.

• Left to right mirror: An exact copy of the files on the left side are copied to the right side. New and modified files are copied over and files that have been deleted are deleted on the right as well.
• Left to right incremental: Uses the same method as the left to right mirror synchronization with the exception that no files are deleted in the target folder.
• Two way incremental: Copies files from left to right and vice verse without deleting any files.

Additional options are provided at the bottom. This includes defining include and exclude filters to only copy the specified files or exclude the specified files. Other options include computing hashes before copying the files, replicating empty directories, use strict file comparison and strict mirror creation which will revert files that were modified on the right.

Create Synchronicity is a comfortable file sync software. The only thing missing seems to be a scheduler configurable in the application. It can however be added to the Windows Task Scheduler quite easily since it supports command line parameters. The file synchronization works with network drives as well and a preview function is build in to display the changes that will be made if the synchronization is executed.

The program can be downloaded from its Sourceforge project website.

An account is required to work with the software program. The account creation requires the selection of an email address and password which are used to authenticate a user and provide access to the stored data. Powerfolder offers four key features to its users:

• File synchronization
• Data Backup
• Collaboration
• Web Access

File Synchronization

File synchronization uses a powerful wizard to guide the user through the process of adding folders to the program that should be synchronized. It is possible to disable the online synchronization option to prevent that data is stored on an online server. This makes it possible to synchronize files directly with computers that are either connected in the local area network or accessible on the Internet.

Several standard folders are selectable from the wizard’s main interface including MyDocuments folders but also folders of Firefox or Thunderbird. Additional folders can be added by using the file browser. PowerFolder will automatically calculate the total size of all selected folders which should give the user a first indication of the length of the synchronization process. The selected files will then be available for synchronization (either online or locally).

It is then possible to use the Sync Previously Setup Folders option in the same wizard from another computer to sync the files that have been selected. Ideal for syncing web browser profiles, emails, contacts, documents and other data that should be available on more than one computer system.

To minimize the update time PowerFolder syncs only changed parts of a file. Since files can be transferred directly between computers you can unleash the full power of your home network or Internet connection. Got unfinished downloads? PowerFolder automatically resumes them after reconnect. Quickly distribute your files with multi source downloads.

Data Backup

The data backup options works similar than the first step of the file synchronization process. The same choice of selecting one of the pre-selected folders or manually selecting folders is available in the wizard. Powerfolder offers to backup the data online or locally. Other computers can then be used to transfer the backed up data so that they are stored on those computers as well. There does not seem to be an option to select individual backup folders though.

Collaboration

It is possible to give access to other people who have a PowerFolder account of their own. Those users can then access the data that was selected by the account owner of the data. That’s an interesting option for collaboration by giving several users access to a specific folder that is containing work related files.

Web Access

Data that is stored on the servers can be accessed from the web interface at the PowerFolder website.

Limitations

The free version of PowerFolder has a limitation of 1 Gigabyte of online and offline storage space, a maximum of three folders that can be synced to five computers. The commercial editions of Powerfolder get rid of most of the limitations. A product comparison is available here.

Verdict

PowerFolder is an easy to use software with a severely limited free edition. The free edition should be enough for users who want to synchronize up to three folders with up to five computer systems. Users who want to synchronize additional folders or files that have a size of more than 1 Gigabyte need to consider switching to a paid account or to another file synchronization and backup software.

Power Folder is available at the developer’s website for all supported operating systems.

Other prime examples include syncing data between computers and a wireless device, cell phone, digital camera or mp3 player. A user could use it to move photos taken with a digital camera to a PC, transfer new mp3 songs to the mp3 player or upload new applications to a mobile phone.

Synchredible is a free data synchronization software that can be used to synchronize data in one way or bi-directionally. Each synchronization is created as a new job with the job wizard which guides the user through the creation.

It always begins by selecting two folders that are currently accessible from the computer system Synchredible is executed from. Supported are local storage devices like hard drives, removable devices like USB drives and network devices that are currently connected to the computer. It is here also that the user makes the selection if subfolders should be synchronized as well.

The synchronization direction can be selected in the second step. It is possible to synchronize the data in one way or bi-drectionally. Additional criteria for the synchronization are configured in the third step. This includes the option to either synchronize all files, only newer files, only files with archive bits and to delete additional files and folders in the target directory if one way synchronization is selected.

This can be further customized in step four which provides the means to include or exclude files and folders using filters that support wildcards.

The data synchronization can be scheduled in the fifth step. This ranges from executing the synchronization every x minutes over executing it on specific days of the week or month to running it on system events that include Windows start, logoff and USB device detection.

Users can create actions that should be executed before and after a synchronization has started and finished. Further settings are defined in the final step. In here it is possible to select a job name and group, make the program check file contents as well before synchronizing data, deleting the archive bit and showing previews before starting the data synchronization.

Syncredible is a sophisticated data synchronization software for the Windows operating system that is free for personal use. It can be directly downloaded from the developer’s website. The language in the program can be switched from German to four other languages including English and French. It is compatible with most Microsoft operating systems including Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows XP.

Free File Sync is an Open Source file synchronization software that’s above everything else super-easy to use. The main interface is separated into a left and right column. Directories can be added to each column. The two main actions offered by Free File Sync are to compare or synchronize the directories and the files residing in them. A click on the Compare button at the top will generate a directory and file listing for every directory that has been added to the application.

All files and directories are displayed in both columns with a blank row in the opposite column if the file or directory does not exist there. Information about each file including its name, size and modification date are displayed in the table as well. Arrows in the middle indicate the action (e.g. overwrite file in the left column, copy file to the right column) are taken if the Synchronize button is pressed.

Statistics for each column are displayed in the footer listing the number of directories, files and the size of the data conveniently. There are also general statistics about the total number of files and folders that would be created if the user would synchronize the files. Several advanced options are available. The file synchronization program supports file filters and several different ways of comparing and synchronizing files. Files are initially compared by name, size and date which can be changed to a file content comparison instead.

Four different file synchronization options are provided by Free File Sync as well with automatic synchronization of both sides selected by default. This can be changed to mirror files that reside in the left folder to the right folder, copy or update files from the left to the right folder or a two way synchronization which synchronizes both sides simultaneously.

A batch job can be created using the parameters configured before. Batch jobs can be executed by starting the file synchronization software with the file name of the batch job as a parameter. This makes it also possible to add the file patronization as a scheduled task in the Windows Task Scheduler.

Free File Sync is easy to use. It takes only a few minutes the most to compare or synchronize files and another few to create a batch file to sync files regularly with little to no user interaction. The program is available at the Sourceforge website where it is available for 32-bit editions of Windows and Ubuntu.

This includes a title and description for that folder on Flickr, permission settings (public, private, only friends, only family, friends and family), a matching method (what to do if images already exist on Flickr), order and filters. A click on the View and Sync all button will process all folders that have been selected for synchronization and display new images in a preview window. A click on the sync button in the preview window will start the file synchronization process that transfers the files to Flickr.

It is also possible to right-click a folder and synchronize its contents (and the contents of its subfolder if selected).

FlickrSync can be run automatically from the command line after the first configuration. This process requires no user interaction which makes it a great way to synchronize photos with Flickr on a regular basis, e.g. during system startup or after moving photos from a digital camera to the computer system.

The file synchronization software FlickrSync supports all Flickr image formats. It is compatible with computer systems running Windows XP or later Microsoft operating systems.

The other requirements are a Windows Live ID and Microsoft Internet Explorer to access the contents on the Internet. Users who might find those restrictions to strict are better off with Dropbox who is less restrictive in this regard.

Live Mesh works by adding computer devices to the Mesh. The Mesh are all devices that synchronize data. It basically works by adding devices to the Mesh in first place, e.g. a local computer running Windows XP. That computer is then added to the Mesh that the user has access to. The process finishes with the installation of the Live Mesh software on the local computer.

Live Mesh will create a system folder on the computer system containing all folders that have been selected for synchronization by the user. That’s different from Dropbox which makes use of one static folder with the requirement that all synchronized folders are created in that folder. Some users have posted workarounds by using symbolic links but that’s pretty advanced and not recommended for beginners or inexperienced computer users.

Folders can be added by right-clicking them and selecting “Add folder to Live Mesh” from the context menu. It takes a few seconds before the newly selected folder appears in the global system folder. Synchronization with the Live Mesh online service usually starts immediately afterwards.

Live Mesh is currently providing 5 Gigabytes of storage space to its users, 3 Gigabytes more than what Dropbox is currently offering.

Another interesting option is the ability to invite members. Inviting members will give them access to selected folders – and their files. That’s interesting if documents need to be shared with several computer users regularly.

Live Mesh does have its shortcomings. The main being the concentration on the Windows platform and the Internet Explorer requirement for browsing the data online. While Internet Explorer will surely remain a requirement the prospect of being able to add mobile devices and Macs looks interesting. It remains to be seen though if mobile devices are limited to the Windows Mobile platform.

As of now Live Mesh provides a fast way of synchronizing data online for Windows users. It works intuitive, the performance is fine and the storage space is enough for a lots of data.

Goodsync provides the typical left / right interface that many file synchronization software programs use. One interesting aspect is that it can not only be used to keep files in sync but also to backup them. Both operations are started as so called jobs. A job consists of a few steps that the user has to configure.

A file synchronization requires the selection of two folders that should be kept in sync. This can be used to sync emails, documents, music and anything practically anything else that is needed in more than one folder.

The analyze button will scan both directories and display the folders, files, sizes and additional information of both sides. The program will also list the space requirements on both hard drives if the synchronization is started. All files and the direction that they are copied will be shown as well.

Goodsync can also change the display mode so that only conflicts, errors and other information such as the sync state will be displayed.

Users can finetune the process before starting the synchronization. It is for example possible to exclude folders or files from synchronization or change their direction. The default sync direction is a two-way sync but it is possible to change that to a one-way sync easily in the options.

Filters can be used to exclude certain files or folders from the synchronization. One of the most important aspects of a file synchronization software is the support of storage space. GoodSync supports synchronization and backups on local hard drives, network drives, ftp, sftp, Amazon S3, WebDav and WinMobile hardware. It is therefor no problem to sync files from ftp or sftp to the local computer.

Once everything has been configured according to your wishes you can the automatic options. It’s much like a scheduler. You can set the interval or event when the file synchronization software should analyze or sync files and what the software should do if conflicts are encountered.

The options are also the place to create global filters and to change other options like the buffer size or if locked files should be copied.

Experienced users will like the sheer amount of command line options that are provided by the file synchronization software. There is practically a switch for every option of the software to synchronize or backup files. It is possible to import or export the job list to run it on multiple computers.

Every user is able to create file synchronization or backup jobs with GoodSync in a few easy steps. Experts will love all the settings and options to tweak the software.

Five licenses of GoodSync are up for grabs. To win one simply leave a comment and tell us what you would sync or backup with it.