Sync folder on external drive

[bgschiller]

Migrating owncloud/core#7635, which seemed to have been lost in the shuffle. I have the same request.

When the desktop client is configured to sync files to an external drive, ownCloud works well until the drive is unplugged. From my own experience, OS X 10.9 will prevent the drive from being ejected because it is in use.

According to @mattschinkel, "Upon unplugging a USB hard disk, owncloud will crash. In some cases on windows, owncloud goes nuts with notifications since it cannot find the files. When the USB hard disk is plugged back in, owncloud will not resume sync, as I feel it should."

I found that as long as I quit the ownCloud client first I was able to eject the external drive. After plugging my external drive back in, I could start ownCloud and it would sync correctly.

[danimo]

The client has not been developed with external drives in mind. What's the use case here? After all, you want your synced data to be available, which is not the case with an external drive that you unplug.

[mattschinkel]

In my case, i have a laptop with a 250gb SSD for windows, and i require more space for my data, music, movies etc. I use a external 4TB drive.

I will not always have the 4TB drive plugged in, especially on startup or when i move my laptop around.

[bgschiller]

Seconded. That's my situation except that I only have a 128GB ssd.

[fernLightning]

I'll also add my name as one seeking this as a requirement.
We have OSX laptop users (small ssd) who sync their owncloud client to a folder on an external disk.
Currently we find:

• Finder trys to block ejecting the disk until owncloud client is quit. Presumably owncloud keeps some files open.
• You shouldn't run owncloud client whilst the disk is disconnected, as it automatically creates files in /Volumes/externaldisk/, thus stopping the external disk from then mounting at that mount point.. i.e. the disk next mounts at /Volumes/externaldisk 1/. For the owncloud client to work again the user then has to manually delete the extraneous files and re-mount the disk, i.e. they come harass IT support.

[antoneliasson]

I just tested this on Linux, and I feel that Owncloud Client works as expected. Using client version 2.1.0 on Ubuntu 15.04. Desktop environment is GNOME 3 + Xmonad window manager. The external drive is NTFS formatted and mounted using Nautilus under /media//.

These are the steps I have done:

1. Add a new sync directory on the external drive. Let it sync.
2. Attempt to unmount it in Nautilus while Owncloud Client is running. A dialog is displayed: "One or more applications are keeping the volume busy (Owncloud Client)."
3. Select Unmount anyway. (silly user)
4. Client shows "Unable to find local sync folder." (good)
5. Restart Owncloud Client. Same error (good)
6. Re-mount external drive.
7. Owncloud resumes syncing. (good)

Also tried starting Owncloud Client with the drive disconnected, which showed the same error until the drive was reconnected (good).

[mattschinkel]

When i tried, i was using windows client/server. It shouldn't matter if the server is linux or wondows. The external drive was on the client (a laptop). Please test.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 16, 2016, at 3:36 PM, Anton Eliasson [email protected] wrote:

I just tested this on Linux, and I feel that Owncloud Client works as expected. Using client version 2.1.0 on Ubuntu 15.04. Desktop environment is GNOME 3 + Xmonad window manager. The external drive is NTFS formatted and mounted using Nautilus under /media//.

These are the steps I have done:

Add a new sync directory on the external drive. Let it sync.
Attempt to unmount it in Nautilus while Owncloud Client is running. A dialog is displayed: "One or more applications are keeping the volume busy (Owncloud Client)."
Select Unmount anyway. (silly user)
Client shows "Unable to find local sync folder." (good)
Restart Owncloud Client. Same error (good)
Re-mount external drive.
Owncloud resumes syncing. (good)
Also tried starting Owncloud Client with the drive disconnected, which showed the same error until the drive was reconnected (good).

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[antoneliasson]

I understand. I was also talking about the client all along (not External Storage on the server side). The external drive is connected to the Ubuntu 15.04 computer.

If I understand it correctly, the only difference between our setups is that my client is Linux and your client is Windows (and bgschiller's client is OS X). As you say, the server OS is not relevant.

[strozzascotte]

I tested this on MacOs and the client still crashes.

These are the steps I have done:

1. Add a new sync directory on the external drive. Let it sync.
2. Attempt to unmount it in Finder while Owncloud Client is running. A dialog warns that the drive is in use by some application. (Does not specify which one.)
3. Select Force eject. (silly user)
4. After a few minutes the ownCloud client crashes. (bad)
5. Restart Owncloud Client. The client shows "Unable to find local sync folder." (good)
6. Re-mount external drive.
7. Owncloud resumes syncing. (good)

I also tried to pause synchronisation before ejecting the USB drive, but MacOS still won't let me eject the disk cleanly.

Am using MacOS 10.12.2 (Sierra), ownCloud client 2.2.4, sync drive with Mac OS Plus file system.

[phil-davis]

I imagine that ownCloud Client could register to receive device events for the devices where it has sync folders. Then on receiving notification from the OS that a device removal has been requested, it can stop sync on the relevant folder(s). If the user just pulls the USB cable, ownCloud will get a notification that the device has been unexpectedly removed, and will have to do the best it can at that point.
e.g. Windows device events: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa363217(v=vs.85).aspx
Perhaps Qt has some common interface to make this sort of handler OS-independent in the client code, or is that asking too much?

[SamuAlfageme]

Leaving here a reference to #5317 as it is also about finding external/virtual drives after they are back online (half of this issue)

[skwde]

Is this still something that is 'planned'?

The issue looks stale for more than 6 years :(

[Robertschv]

Hey guys, last week had the same issue with a client, the client had a Windows Laptop with not so much space to save her work, so she decided to buy an SD card, and sync with this card, it didn't work.

I formatted the SD card from exFAT to NTFS and sync again, and it worked.

I read older posts and apparently ownCloud has a failure with the exFAT filesystem. Other OS like macOS or Linux don't have proper NTFS driver, so I would suggest trying with other filesystems like APFS or ext4 and see if it works.