Advanced usage of Dropbox free online storage

Dropbox and Live Mesh are common network storage services that can share and synchronize files on multiple computers. Microsoft's Live Mesh provides 5 GB space, the initial free space provided by Dropbox is 2 GB, which can be increased to 5 GB by invitation. The two network synchronization software have their own advantages, but I feel that Dropbox is more useful. Here, I will introduce some tips I have summarized when using Dropbox.

　　1. Synchronize any folder

After the Dropbox installation is complete, you will usually create a my Dropbox folder on your computer and put the files in this folder for synchronization. This is not as useful as Live Mesh. At least mesh can synchronize specified folders such as "desktop", while Dropbox can only synchronize fixed folders. To solve the problem of synchronizing other folders, you need to use the junction/mklink tool.

For Windows XP users, Microsoft provides a small tool, junction, which can be used to create and delete a junction directory in the NTFS system. The contents of this directory are the same as those of the original directory, if you modify the content in any folder, the other will change accordingly. The junction directory is a feature of the NTFS file system, but Windows XP does not have a tool to operate on it, click here to download an EXE file for use. It is supported internally in Windows 7 and its command is mklink, which is used in the same way as junction.

For example, you can run the junction "E:/My Documents" "E:/my dropbox/My Documents" command to create a junction directory named E:/my documents, point to E:/my dropbox/my documents, this command is executed instantly, and the two directories are identical, so that we can use E: the/my dropbox/My Documents directory replaces the directory in "My documents.

For Dropbox, the junction directory can only be created according to the preceding command, but not in my dropbox directory. After my test, the junction directory in my dropbox directory can only be synchronized once, after modification, the added files are not synchronized and cannot be synchronized.

　　2. Synchronize MSN and QQ records

If we use MSN and QQ at home and in the company at the same time, we will encounter a problem, that is, the chat records are not synchronized, one company, one home, dropbox can be used to synchronize chat records in two locations.

First, follow the above operations to set My Documents to the junction directory, and put the actual files in the My Dropbox directory. Then, in QQ and MSN, set the default location for saving files and chat records in "My Documents". In this way, all user chat records will be automatically synchronized by Dropbox, in this way, the chat records at home and company are synchronously updated.

　　3. Synchronize documents

"My Documents" stores many important documents of users, and many people need to synchronize "My documents. The synchronization method is to right-click "My documents", modify the target folder location of "My documents", and change it to the Dropbox directory.

4Synchronous Desktop

In addition to "my documents", many people want to synchronize desktop files on multiple computers. There are two solutions: one is to modify the desktop location in the registry, modify the folder to the Dropbox directory. The location of the Registry Modification is: the Desktop path in HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/User Shell Folders and HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders; another method is to create a junction directory on the desktop to implement synchronization. In this way, there will be one more "folder" of the actual junction type on the desktop ", copy the work documents or other documents to this folder for synchronization.

5Synchronize IE favorites

By default, the path of IE Favorites is C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/Favorites. You can modify the path of the Favorites by modifying the Registry to open the registry: HKEY_USERs/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/User Shell Folders, and then change the "Favorites" key value to a folder path under My Dropbox directory. You can perform this operation on multiple computers to automatically synchronize IE favorites from multiple computers.

6Automatic website backup

If you have a website similar to "Moonlight blog", you will also have a headache for data security. How can you safely and automatically back up website data? With Dropbox, we have a new solution for automatic website backup.

For websites using SQL Server, you can set an automatic task in SQL Server to automatically back up database files to the My Dropbox directory every day.

For websites using Access, Access files that are frequently read and written should not be directly stored in the Dropbox directory, but the method of regular replication is better. The specific operation is to create a BAT file with the content "xcopy" E:/website "" E:/My Dropbox/website "/s/e/y ", create a new scheduled task in "System Tools-Task Scheduler", select this batch file, and set Automatic execution on the morning of every day, you can automatically copy the website files (including ACCESS files) under the website directory to the website folder in the Dropbox directory at regular intervals.

In this way, Dropbox can be used to automatically back up files and databases on the website without manual operations. The disadvantage is that up to 5 GB space is not suitable for backup of large websites.

Well, the above are some tips I have summarized when using Dropbox. In general, Dropbox is a very good network synchronization tool. Live Mesh has several disadvantages compared with Dropbox, for example, it only supports Windows, does not support Linux and Mac, and has poor compatibility (for example, if Live Mesh is installed on my company's computer, an error is reported and cannot be installed). In addition, the Live Mesh interface needs to be further optimized.

The default space of Dropbox is 2 GB. If you want to use Dropbox, click here to register the Dropbox account to get a space of 2 to 25 GB. If you invite other users to use it, each time you invite a user to register, you can get up to MB of space, up to 5 GB of Space cap.