Drop Box Hell😱
I had problems earlier this year when they ‘released a Beta’ AKA just launched unadvertised changes on a few of us– and little me was one of them who awoke to a changed working world which meant access to my files changed from a keystroke to 5 or 10 and the interface of the thing changed – reducing the viewing area and giving daft suggestions in the side bar about things I might like to look at.
As I’ve written here before, this year, has been emotional at times for me and I have been grieving for loved ones and dealing with some weird life-situations – so there have been times when I have just wanted to either work – or not – on the books. Hence I had only the vague sensation in my head that ‘something was not going to work for me with the new look DB’. As far as I could tell though, it just added another layer between me and my files – but it still synced – and I ignored my instinct.
I’d an issue when I bought this replacement laptop which only has a small SSD and DB had upped my sub to nearly £300 and this all roughly coincided with this roll-out of the Beta and I let it slide by unchallenged. I had a brief foray into a bunch of old memory stix and gave up any idea of change.
Last week, Wednesday, I woke up to find that none of the office machines could check for changes and/or sync in under 24 hours and that some how the Selective Sync of the Beta and the Smart Sync of the new iteration must have tangled and the i Mac and the Windows files had their file paths changed as the i Mac was trying to read things it couldn’t – and this all produced a proliferation of Selective Sync Conflict copies of files – by Friday they were all trying to sync 400,000 files…
Chat Help was too tiny to read. Email Help too slow and preachy and I had already done the things they suggested. I started removing files where I could to External Hard Drives and checking them as I went and eventually my DB was emptied and my stuff saved – I now have an expensive DB account that stores no files as the new iteration cannot get its ducks lined up to be usable.
I noticed that even when DB is not running on my Lap Tops that if I head anywhere near File Explorer that DB wakes up/ re sets and starts syncing again – all 400k files – with my Broad Band connection and sometime reliance on a 50GB contract on my phone this is undesirable !_!
If I retain DB I will not be paying again for their Professional level they moved me too – I was only using 3% of 3Terabits and I may reduce it to the free version – or not at all. The machines all work faster now and though I am over-used to DB syncing between them -spending 7 days straight moving files and wondering what to do, to get things right, was sufficiently painful not to warrant needing to do it again.
My Broad Band out here is not fast, but it does work, and nothing has changed re its speed or availability and I changed no settings on DB – the machines were set up and had been working for years and I have not had any reason to complain about DB – but their corporate move away from being a simple Cloud Storage to File Management – and one that puts its self between the W10 structure and me – has cost me time I will never get back, may have resulted in corrupted files and if I had had staff they would have been laid off . I did not find contacting DB was at all helpful.
The upshot of all that is that I worked in the office pod in 27 for 6 days straight, lost two nights sleep and husband had to put up with me working on the weekend in that distracted and obsessive way we all get when our business is about to be flushed down the loo or buldozed in the name of progress. Over reaction? Not so – if we treated our customers like this we wouldn’t have any. Buying shares in DB would seem stupid. The time is now ripe for a new cloud entrant – one that is not one of the three bears we have now – Too Slow, Too Insecure or Too Clumsy.
ON the writing front I did read out loud the piece I was editing – that would have been last Monday – but now I will have to do it again as the whole a fore mentioned saga kicked off in my face. Blog posts didn’t get written and I was heard – more than once – to wail, ‘I have had enough!’
I also cancelled my planned trip to Weymouth Writing Matters on the Friday as I was still in the throes of sorting DB out and didn’t want to take the day out of it – I’d also found the bus I was planning to use made a whole day of a short trip – so back to the drawing board on that one.
Day off today – after catch up Blogs – Tue 15/10/2019 and then tomorrow back to editing. I obviously haven’t had enough 🙂