For a more advanced but better solution you can combine a rsync
powered cygwin installation with a init batch script calling a cygwin shell script that would trigger - whenever scripted - a synchronization of the synchronized with the trusted 3rd party cloud storage folder with the contents lying in the watched folder.
(1.) Install cygwin following this link. Beware to select rsync in the list of packages to select. If you miss it you can safely rerun this installer whenever you want. Whenever you need another package in the future.
(2.) After you move around in cygwin getting a basic understanding of the environment, edit sync.sh whenever you want (you may later move it to a better location).
sync.sh contents:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# The synchronized folders.
WATCHED_FOLDER=/cygdrive/DRIVE_LETTER/PATH/TO/WATCHED/FOLDER
SYNCED_FOLDER=/cygdrive/DRIVE_LETTER/PATH/TO/SYNCED/FOLDER
# Will run forever!
until false
do
# Do a single remote synchronization
rsync -avn --delete WATCHED_FOLDER SYNCED_FOLDER
# Wait five minutes before resyncing.
sleep 300
done
(3.) Do some testing with manual calls to sync.sh
from cygwin. Watch the results. Change some folders and files and rerun. Watch again. Repeat.
(4.). Once you are satisfied with the results, turn -avn
to -av
to deactivate the dry running at your own risk. From this point changes will be run effectively with no Microsoft thrashbin support.
(5.) Go start->programs->start->[mouse right click]->open->new->file.
(6.) Name the file sync.bat or something.
(7.) Edit sync.bat and Cygwin's ~/.bashrc
:
sync.bat contents:
rem call the synchronization neverending script.
DRIVE_LETTER:\PATH\TO\CYGWIN\Cygwin.bat
~/.bashrc contents (this is the hard thing to do, because you need to edit it with vi
from Cygwin, but you can most probably work this around by editing from Microsoft the file DRIVE_LETTER:\PATH\TO\CYGWIN\home\YOUR_USER_NAME.bashrc:
[...]
/cygdrive/DRIVE_LETTER/PATH/TO/sync.sh
[...]
That is a line that would call the infinite syncing loop. That is not the truly way of doing this kind of thing, but should be just OK for now.
(8.) Reboot
(9.) Check with taskmgr.exe
or the Microsoft Task Manager that there is a bash.exe
running. If you did not start cygwin yet, that should be the process doing the synchronization.
(10.) As optional future steps you may want to daemonize the process in any way. There may be many possibilities here.
This may be a hard walkthrough but there are a lot of community support in the Internet for all the stages.
Many other ways of doing may exist. For example you can autostart a GNU/Linux virtual machine that would do all of this without Cygwin. This would need you to share the watched and synced folders over the local network, better a private network between your host and the virtual machine only, and then mounting the folders from GNU/Linux using the cifs-utils, samba and smbclient packages. Many of the shown stages will apply the same to this other methodology of giving UNIX shell capabilities to your Microsoft host.
See http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/sync-other-folders
– Vadzim – 2016-07-22T12:11:15.013The dropbox wiki has been abandoned and I couldn't find the relevant article in the webarchive. – rossmcm – 2019-10-17T01:12:23.577
https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/symlinks states:
As of mid-2019, Dropbox no longer follows items outside of your Dropbox account that are linked to by a symlink.
– sherdim – 2019-10-30T09:03:45.650You may want to add some information on which operating system you are using. It is usually no problem on linux (even with symbolic links even pointing to a NTFS partition). It can however fail under some circumstances, for example I could not use it for syncing a folder in the AFS. – Tim – 2013-10-17T13:06:17.150
Windows 7 Professional x64 on a NTFS Partition. Dropbox is installed on D:/Dropbox as opposed to its default installation folder in C:/ – user2247336 – 2013-10-17T14:04:55.013