Dropbox vs OneDrive: Looking for Changes

I’ve been using Dropbox quite heavily for a couple of years now, however I recently reviewed all my subscriptions and decided moving to OneDrive would be an easy way to cut out one given the 1TB of space I get with O365 Home. I moved all the files on my home computer from the Dropbox to OneDrive folder, moving/ deleting/ adding a bunch of files in the process. Two weeks later, OneDrive was still stuffing around “looking for changes”. It would download new files quite quickly such as if I took a photo on my phone and it uploaded using the iOS app, but existing files never seemed to sync. I tried /reset, killing/restarting the process, signing out/in of the app, restarting the PC, relinking the folder, etc, but could never quite get OneDrive to kick into gear.

Out of frustration, I copied everything in the OneDrive folder back to the Dropbox folder to see how long it would take to resync. Everything had been deleted from the cloud by this stage. About ten days later, the job was finished and all my files were back in Dropbox.

OneDrive? Still looking for changes…! It looks like I’ll be keeping that Dropbox subscription after all.

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Conversation 5 comments

  • TechnologyTemperance

    21 June, 2017 - 2:50 pm

    <p>I honestly feel their sync client was better back in the "Live Mesh" days.</p>

    • Dan1986ist

      Premium Member
      21 June, 2017 - 3:25 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#128048"><em>In reply to TechnologyTemperance:</em></a></blockquote><p>Like being able to sync files and folders peer-to-peer on one's LAN without first having to upload to Microsoft's servers and then download those files or folders to the other computer which can often be in the same room? That was a very useful feature. </p>

  • Zubair Hussain Khan

    07 August, 2017 - 3:16 am

    <p>Excellent article,</p><p>Onedrive Dropbox both are good, but I prefer Dropbox because it is more user-friendly than one drive, but this is my opinion you can choose any of one. Or you can visit: <span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68);">https://goo.gl/pNT3T1</span></p&gt;

  • adamjarvis

    07 August, 2017 - 11:58 am

    <p>If you're not specifically interested in having subscription/Cloud based Dropbox or One Drive storage (i.e. offsite storage), but want the sync like features of Dropbox, I'd recommend looking at a Synology NAS Storage Device, it has an client application called Cloud Station Drive that mimics Dropbox features and works really well. FreeNAS/Unison may do similar, but Synology works very similar to Dropbox, pretty much enable and forget, like Dropbox. </p><p><br></p><p>I use this to synchronize files across different OS's I'm working in. Win10/Win7SP1/Linux and macOS, so my files are accessible/synced across all OSs.</p><p><br></p><p>Synology blurb….</p><p>Cloud Station Drive is an application designed to synchronize files between your Synology NAS and PCs via the Internet (or local area network), ensuring that your data is always up-to-date and enabling you to easily access your files. Even when the Internet connection/LAN is not available, you can still view and edit your files offline, and all the changes made will be automatically synced to your Synology NAS and PCs once the Internet/LAN connection is restored. </p><p><br></p><p>(I've no connection with Synology).</p>

  • jchampeau

    Premium Member
    07 August, 2017 - 3:31 pm

    <p>I've had similar results. It seems Dropbox has, does, and will always do file sync better than OneDrive because it's the only thing they do. I recently got a new laptop and it took just a few minutes to sync all of my (many gigabytes of) Dropbox content to it. Shocked, I did some checking and read that Dropbox now supports local sync when both devices are running the Dropbox app and have the feature enabled. This is the kind of feature that makes a difference to users but that Microsoft would never prioritize over, say, adding visualizations to Groove Music, so those 18 people who use it will have something to look at while their music plays.</p>

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