Syncing outside folders to Dropbox used to be such a pain because symlinks/junctions don't sync changes as they happen (you need to restart Dropbox each time in order for it to sync changes) so that's why we built Boxifier. Disclaimer: I am one of the founders.
The long term game for Dropbox is in having businesses outsource storage to them. While consumer cloud storage is a tough market (due to it being a race to the bottom), the vision of getting businesses of all sizes to replace their legacy file servers with Dropbox sounds very compelling.
You can already see Dropbox has transitioned its focus to businesses. Mailbox and Carousel shut down.
That is because a single consumer can easily switch to another service based on price alone and can afford to spend his/her own time on figuring out how to migrate their files.
On the other hand, once you have 100 business users which got used to Dropbox, switching to another solution has a real cost for your business. That's why Dropbox is focusing on businesses: they are stickier in the long run.
However, Dropbox will still maintain a strong consumer presence because familiarity is one of the key points for selling Dropbox to businesses. Moreover, every business starts small and every founder is a consumer at heart.
The promise of Dropbox for businesses is in outsourcing the complexity of storage in exchange for a monthly/yearly subscription. Consumer cloud storage is just a step in executing a bigger vision.
From a first look on Windows, this is implemented with NTFS sparse files [1] and a file system minifilter. The sparse files act as placeholders so that you can browse your entire Dropbox structure. When you access a file, the minifilter sees that and starts fetching the data from Dropbox servers in the background. You can think of it as HSM [2]
> Having to save them in your Dropbox, or having to move them to your Dropbox afterward, turns out to be a massive friction.
This also bothered me so I looked for a solution. As much as I love Dropbox, I still have data stuck on external drives and NAS boxes. I looked at some Dropbox competitors but you always get that half-baked feeling with them. I sticked with Dropbox in the end (especially after they introduced the 1TB plans) but I still wanted to get the files from my external drive in there.
I tried symlinks which felt neat at first, only to later discover their nasty shortcomings: imagine the horror of files getting deleted when my external drive was disconnected. Symlinks also don't get the updates so in order to sync changes I always had to close and restart Dropbox. Back to square one.
In the end, all I wanted was a simple way to have files synced from my external drive and NAS, without having to worry about it or doing voodoo to get it working. That's why I created Boxifier (http://www.boxifier.com). I wanted a super easy, set-and-forget, "it just works" solution.
I think Dropbox doesn't get enough credit for solving the sync problem for the masses in a way that feels so simple. That simple that it's easy to forget that it is a hard problem in the first place.
What happens here is that Windows Explorer asks Dropbox whether it should display a green or blue icon for a file. It does this for all files, including those outside of the Dropbox folder.
What happens here is that Windows Explorer asks Dropbox whether it should display a green or blue icon for a file. It does this for all files, including those outside of the Dropbox folder.
The big difference here is the principle of least privilege[1].
We could have built Boxifier so that it requires you to login into Dropbox and get back an access token to be used by Boxifier with the Dropbox API.
If someone wanted to get access to the data in your Dropbox account, they could do that with an access token (that they received when you authorized their app to access your Dropbox). Then they could use that token from any computer to download data from your Dropbox, without you ever finding out about it.
Boxifier works completely offline so it doesn't need any network access (which could be misused). If you want to be 101% sure you can setup a firewall rule and block all network access for Boxifier. This way you can make sure it cannot get data from your Dropbox folder and upload it to a remote location.
On the other hand, with an access token you have no control on how it is used outside of your computer. You may argue that you can always revoke it, but the reality of today's attacks is that they go stealth for a long time before you find out about them.
We used to work in the antivirus industry so that's why we care so much about security and privacy. Boxifier has been designed with security in mind from its early days.
1) With symlinks Dropbox doesn't sync the changes you make to those folders until you restart it. With Boxifier, changes are synced in real-time.
2) If the target of the symlink is not available/not found then Dropbox will delete the contents of that folder from your account. This is the case for instance with removable drives. With Boxifier, ejecting the USB drive doesn't cause the contents to be deleted from your Dropbox account.
3) If you use selective sync with a symlink, the contents of the target folder willl be deleted you uncheck the folder from the selective sync settings dialog. With Boxifier, this doesn't happen because it has built-in support for this scenario. The folder just gets marked internally as inactive.
4) Symlinked folders lack the Dropbox overlay icons (green checkmarks, blue circles) so you can't get an idea of what the sync progress on those folders is. With Boxifier you have full Explorer integration so that you get the same experience as with the Dropbox folder.
5) Symlinked folders lack the Dropbox context menu functionality. With Boxifier you get the full Dropbox context menu functionality so you can easily share files, get public links, see previous versions or see them on Dropbox.com
6) A person who is not tech savvy will probably have a hard time understanding how to use symlinks and all their shortcomings. With Boxifier you simply right-click a folder to sync it with Dropbox. No need to be a computer wizard.
1) Yes, file exclusions are definitely on our roadmap.
2) For now folders sync as subfolders of the Dropbox\Boxifier folder, but we've been receiving this feature request so that you can pick where your outside folders will be synced in Dropbox. This is also on our roadmap.
One of the reasons is that I've seen it as a common practice with other software I used. For instance, the demo version of Traktor Pro 2 DJ-ing software closes itself after 30 minutes.
We've also set a high quality bar for us with 30 minutes. If the product doesn't deliver on its promise in 30 minutes then it means we need to do better.
We chose the 30 minutes instead of making the product a 7-day or 14-day or 30-day trial because we prefer freemium to software trials. With a number of days for you to try the software you can for instance install on day 1, go to a business trip on day 2 and when you return on day 7 realize that the software expired and you didn't even get the chance to try it out. With the attention economy of today, we believe day-based software trials are broken.
With Boxifier, if you don't find the time today you can try out the premium features again tomorrow, next week or whenever you find some free time because the product never expires.
Sure. It adds a file system virtualization layer under the Dropbox desktop client so that folders outside of Dropbox are seen by the Dropbox client as part of the Dropbox folder.
Boxifier monitors those folders for changes, aggregates the changes and then passes them to the Dropbox client through the virtualization layer.
Razvan (author) here. I created an app to sync any folder with Dropbox. It currently works on Windows. Haven't finished the website yet, just the app.
A little background on the app:
I wanted to backup my external drives to Dropbox for a while and tried using symlinks but those don't work for that. If you remove the external drive, all your files will get deleted from Dropbox. Also, you need to restart Dropbox if you make changes to the folders on the external drive. Otherwise, they won't be synced.
I talked to my twin brother about this and he suggested building an app for that. Having a background in Windows internals we decided to go ahead and build it. We wanted to solve that in an elegant and effortless way, something even our parents (who are not tech savvy) could use.
So here is Boxifier, a Windows app which installs on top of Dropbox and lets you right click any folder and sync it to Dropbox.
I would really appreciate any feedback you might have.
Thanks,
Razvan