A good alternative to Windows Offline Files (Local caching of files)

[Robertoal]

Hi there tech people!

 

Answer to my question:

It does not look like there is a perfect alternative for offline files.

Goodsync looks like the second best thing.

 

The use case is as follows:

My wife is a photographer, and now uses the new D850 - which has one big downside: file sizes. Photo's can be as large as 65mb!

After a shoot she will copy her files to our NAS (1 gigabit network) after which she selects 'make these file available offline' which 'caches'  them on the local drive.

So in theory she should have local disk (512gb samsung nvme ssd) performance in Lightroom. Right? Unfortunately no; this seems to be a known problem with offlines files: read speed is extremely slow. Even slower than just putting the files on an 5400rpm usb 3.0 hdd...

 

So I searched for an alternative. Normally you get suggestions like owncloud/nextcloud or dropbox for a cloud based solution, or on the other hand Syncfree/sync this /sync that as a local sync solution.

BUT they all miss 1 key feature: selection of which data you want to 'cache' locally!

This is feature is paramount; because she has around 4TB in photo's.

 

Concluding:

1. Need a selective offline available function

2. Needs to function as a cache solution (So on both server AND laptop)

 

 

Anybody any ideas?

 

 

Details:

NAS/ VM server:

dual 2670 / 64gb ram / 6 tb storage / ssd cache disk

 

Laptop:

XPS 15 - 9550 (i7 6700hq / 8gb RAM / 512gb nvme ssd)

 

 

 

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by Robertoal
Updated with an answer

[Catsrules]

I personally don't know of an alternative to offline files, I have had major issues with it and it has turned me off of Offline files.  

 

My solution has be to just use Nextcloud as it lets me selectively sync folders.  I separate everything I need into folders, then just uncheck the folders I don't want locally and check the ones I do want locally. 

For example I do this with my school work, I have a folder called school and under that folder I have folders for each semester of school

 

for example

2017 01 Spring

2017 08 Fall

2018 02 Spring

2018 05 Summer

 

When I finish with a semester I uncheck the folder because I don't want to sync anymore, it gets deleted locally. If I ever want it back again I just check it again, and it comes back. Or I could even check just an individual class within a semester folder to sync. 

 

The down sides is this isn't really cached. So now you going to have to deal with two locations, one is the local location that just has whatever you have synced and the other is the network location that has everything, so that kinda sucks.

It is a bit of a pain because you need to use the Nextcloud client and it isn't integrated into file explore. So it would be another program you will need to learn how to use.

 

 

 

 

[Robertoal]

Thank you for your reply!

 

I just checked it out and the feature to select folders is indeed really nice. 

For me the solution is not perfect because we want to copy the files directly to the samba share. And there is no way for nextcloud to 'know'  that there are new files created; and so the NC database will not be updated.

 

Maybe my interpretation of caching is not right, but what I mean with it is this:

'Having a LOCAL version (copy) of a file that resides on the server for faster access times' 

 

 

[Mikensan]

Honestly I would work backwards. Copy the files locally and have backups sent to the NAS. Or buy a couple 10gb cards from Ebay (~$20 for card + cable) and work off the NAS directly. You can have an "active" work folder on the desktop that as soon as files hit it, it gets copied to the NAS. On the NAS set it to to take hourly (or more frequent) snapshots of this folder, so if she deletes something you can recover it. There's no real reason to use offline cache in such a small environment, its only purpose was to lessen the load on a network.

 

From years of working in IT I shudder at the thought of offline files. Windows offline files is total junk and has only caused me heartache. Previous job our sales engineers used it to cache their work files, just awful. 

[Mikensan]

Most backup agents you can have set to backup on a schedule - for the active folder just have it set to incremental every 15 minutes. Or just use syncthing to go from desktop > NAS, not the other way around (double the effort really).

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, Mikensan said:

Most backup agents you can have set to backup on a schedule - for the active folder just have it set to incremental every 15 minutes. Or just use syncthing to go from desktop > NAS, not the other way around (double the effort really).

I was gonna say, I'd probably create an RSync/RoboCopy/XCopy script to just mirror the working drive to the NAS or something like that.

 

I agree that simply working locally and then figuring out a way to copy the files to the NAS either using sync scripts, or backup software, is the best way to do this. Forget caching completely.

[Robertoal]

Thanks guys!

Maybe that is indeed the way to go. 

It has to be completely automatic though, and has to have some visual confirmation of a succeeded copy to the server.

A bit like dropbox has with the green V's on the folders that are in sync.

 

So the next question is; does such a sync program exist?

 

Thanks againg for the help!

[dalekphalm]

17 hours ago, Robertoal said:

Thanks guys!

Maybe that is indeed the way to go. 

It has to be completely automatic though, and has to have some visual confirmation of a succeeded copy to the server.

A bit like dropbox has with the green V's on the folders that are in sync.

 

So the next question is; does such a sync program exist?

 

Thanks againg for the help!

You could write the script so that it leaves the command prompt window on the screen. Or alternatively, have it output to a text log file. Or halt on errors. There’s a few different things you can do. 

 

You run the script as a scheduled task and just choose your frequency (every 5 minutes, for example). 

[Robertoal]

Altough for me personally an command prompt is not an issue, for my wife... it is. She is not exactly IT minded.

So I found the program 'Goodsync' which just works. It does not give me the V checkmark for synced files though.

 

Concluding: Not a perfect solution but workable I gues.

 

Thankss all for your help!

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Robertoal said:

Altough for me personally an command prompt is not an issue, for my wife... it is. She is not exactly IT minded.

So I found the program 'Goodsync' which just works. It does not give me the V checkmark for synced files though.

 

Concluding: Not a perfect solution but workable I gues.

 

Thankss all for your help!

OneDrive now includes on demand / offline file support. It used to be all or nothing but now there's a bit of customisation to it.

[NelizMastr]

13 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

OneDrive now includes on demand / offline file support. It used to be all or nothing but now there's a bit of customisation to it.

Which is a godsend. Especially the OneDrive for Business client was a first class travesty with lots of sync errors that had no real fix but to resync the entire library and redo changes.