Technology Kills Deconstructing technology, one piece at a time…

I too am disappointed after forking out a hefty fee for sugar sync. It seems on first inspection they offer a load of great features, but the execution and navigation of these features is poor, and that's being kind. It seems their company seems to focus on being at the forefront of new innovation like being able to backup files by email (useless feature in my opinion), and other glittery features, but not put any focus on usability.

For example, the photo feature where they claim you can upload all your photos to facebook, from your iphone/blackberry etc… sounds great (and it would be if it worked) but lack of IA thinking means its utterly useless. To take but one small example, there is no folder system for images (shock horror!) so you have to actually scroll through thousands of images if you want to do anything. Why not add such basic functionality?

My summary – sugar sync is great if you are a low end user with a few files and impressed by sparkly things, if you want to use it for anything serious like me, I wouldn't bother.

Still looking for a better alternative mind you. Any ideas?….

SpiderOak seems to be a good alternative, so far. There are things I am not overly keen on–it's very resource-intensive, it's a bit slow to get everything scanned and synced upon opening the application, etc. But, it seems to be rock-solid and I am more comfortable trusting it with my data. Check out my more recent post for a comparison of SugarSync and SpiderOak.

SpiderOak seems to be a good alternative, so far. There are things I am not overly keen on–it's very resource-intensive, it's a bit slow to get everything scanned and synced upon opening the application, etc. But, it seems to be rock-solid and I am more comfortable trusting it with my data. Check out my more recent post for a comparison of SugarSync and SpiderOak.

I have been running the 30day free trial for about a week, BUT today I found a problem that if not fixed by SharpCast will cause me to stop the trial.

I manually created a folder on my laptop that existed on my PC (Win 7). I then created a new sub-folder on the laptop (Win XP). I didn't intend sharing this folder from my laptop to PC, but did so by error as I was trying to get SugarSync setup. When I realised my error, I tried un-syncing the folder. SugarSync says it is not synced on both the laptop and PC, but the PC still shows the SugarSync circle on the folder icon. I then went to the on-line repository, and deleted the sub-folder and the top-level folder. SugarSync deleted the first sub-folder on the PC, and continues to delete it even if I do New > Folder, it is immediately deleted by SugarSync. Any clues, anyone?

Have you heard whether Sugarsync has resolved this issue? Thanks, Tamara

I want to use SugarSync to move files back and forth from a laptop to a desktop. It does not seem well-suited to this task. With DropBox, the file always appeared in near real time. There is no apparent way to force a sync, so for my purposes, SugarSync is useless. My employer enforces NAC and endpoint control such that I can’t split tunnel from the VPN. Now that they also block DropBox I have to mail files back and forth like an idiot or incessantly swap out flash drives. Yet another example of productivity being unnecessarily impaired by security weenies who insist we change each of our ten passwords twenty times a year.

You have some good points here. I manage the Sugarsync account for a client company and we have been relatively happy so far although have not delved too deeply and use the system as an online backup rather then the sync tool. I think I am going to have to check how its all working because this could cause real problems.

Good idea–I’ve heard from several people that they have not had the same issues I’ve experienced, so I can’t say what the difference is in my case–but I have also heard from a lot of people who have had similar experiences.

It looked like it was working fine until I investigated deeper and found the issues I’ve had with it. Best of luck to you in your investigation of it as well–I look forward to hearing if you have any issues, and if so if you find any way around them.

Thanks for the comment!

Tamara,

I have not heard. I still have a SugarSync account, and will make a note to give it another try and see if it’s working any better so that I can post an update.

Thanks!

This is one of the issues I’ve had with SS as well. Every time I replaced a file, I had to go to my account online and verify that it had the new version of that file and that it was syncing properly to both machines, which often was not the case. It turned into more of a hassle than just copying my files back and forth, so I moved on to another sync tool and plan to check out SS again soon to see if it’s doing any better.

When it works, it’s quite slick. It’s just too bad I couldn’t get it working properly

Hm, but once you have selected your sync folders there should really be no need to touch the sugarsync software again. Just letting it run in the background works fine for me…

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While that should be true, it didn’t work that way at all for me. There were problems upon problems, many inconsistencies between the folders on my computer and the folders on SugarSync’s server, countless syncing problems with valid files getting renamed without notification on one or the other computer… Some or all of these issues may have been fixed since my article, however–I have not tried SugarSync again in a while (been happy with SpiderOak for the most part).

I may give it another shot soon, though.

Thanks for the comment.

Thanks for your article. I am using sugarsync for work and I am not too happy with it. This morning sugarsync told my employer and I that our shared folders were ‘in sync’ when they were not. Two important files were actually ‘pending download’ (after two days!) from my laptop. Once we clicked on this on the file manager on my laptop, a window popped up saying that uploading was in progress.

What then actually happened was that it replaced my file with the earlier file from his folder (yes, it actually OVERWROTE my saved and updated file with an earlier version, and all my changes were lost).

Earlier that morning, when he had assumed that our folders were in sync (when they actually were not), he used an earlier version of my file (containing data that was no longer applicable) to send out information to recipients, thereby sending it to some who should not have received it. The issue wasted time and caused some embarrassment, and to my distress made it look at first as if I had not done my work thoroughly.  

This is the exact reason that problems like you and I have had with SugarSync are not OK–even if they are related to growing pains, or if there are still bugs to be worked out, customers are paying for mission-critical data synchronization and SugarSync does not seem to be able to deliver that at the moment.

I really like the SugarSync plans, their desktop and web interface, and a lot of other things about them, but they’re all for naught if SugarSync can’t properly make sure that files are in sync.

Thanks for the comment!

Agreed, emphatically! We’ve decided, after yesterday’s experience, that sugarsync is too risky. Based on your recommendation in other posts, we’ve signed up for spideroak and will hope for the best

Great to hear. I have had a great experience with SpiderOak since becoming a customer, and am happy to have turned a few others toward them as well

So far, SpiderOak has perhaps been a bit slower than other systems, but more importantly, in my experience if it tells me a folder is synchronized, it actually is. I’d be interested to hear your experience with it as well.

Thank you for all your comments on SugarSync.  What do you think of DropBox?

I got an entire folder that just “vanish” from my laptop. The web interface shows the folder, but no way to get it back. I have reset the configuration and try to download everything again, no lucky yet. But I HAVE A BACKUP, actually, I keep at least 2 backups, just in case. My conclusion: NOT READY FOR CRITICAL MISSION WORK. 

Unfortunately there are a number of problems, it wont sync pst files or accounting files (MYOB, Quickbooks). It also doesn’t tell you what it didn’t backup, I suggest you start checking your web account as there may be other folders totally missing as well.

I’m under the impression that it’ll sync PST and things like accounting files after they are unlocked (when the program using them is closed).

I completely agree regarding it not telling you the things it didn’t back up, and just having a lot of missing files (or replaced files which return to the original) and other sync issues.

I love the idea behind SugarSync, and the way in which it works in theory–it just doesn’t do an adequate job of ensuring data consistency in all cases.

After several years of testing, I can safely say that I have found nothing which syncs half as well as Dropbox, even though its feature set is more limited than most other services. It’s caused me to gladly shell out the extra cash required for adequate Dropbox space, because it’s the only thing I’ve found that works quickly, and has never caused me any data consistency issues.

Ben