Can iDrive Sync be used to sync Scrivener projects between an iMac and a MacBook? I’m referring specifically to the iDrive Sync feature (not backup and restore).
Thanks.
At a quick glance, it seems OK as a location for your backups, but not for your active projects.
Your backups, as set in Preferences > Backups are not the projects you’re actually working on; they are there to save you if you hit serious problems.
Your active projects are not “files”, but packages containing many, potentially thousands of interlinked files which are hidden by Apple’s package format. Scrivener needs them all to be immediately accessible on your local storage … even using a local, home cloud service can cause problems as evidenced by another thread. iDrive would not seem to meet that requirement.
Mark
Thank you. I’m aware that projects are not files but packages. I’m using other software which uses packages, too.
I’ve stopped using Scrivener last year because I no longer wanted to keep Dropbox on my machine. I only recently started using iDrive and was hoping to see it included in the supported sync solutions for active projects, but the frankly bizarre Dropbox/Scrivener singularity hasn’t evolved much it seems.
I suppose this is the case even when quitting Scrivener on the desktop, waiting for a sync to the laptop to finish, and then (and only then) opening Scrivener on the laptop?
Thanks for your feedback.
Syncing desktop and laptop can be done using any cloud service that reliably upload and download changed files in a quick and safe way that you can monitor.
… and that keeps a complete copy of the package on both computers.
If you don’t want to use Dropbox for whatever reason, have a look at Sync.com. Although they claim that it is not suitable for Scrivener projects, I have been using it successfully for 5 years or so to work with my collaborator in China, where Dropbox is blocked by the GFWoC! I think Sync is very slightly slower than Dropbox, but unless you use both you would hardly know. The usual caveats of allowing everything to sync fully before closing or opening apply.
Mark