Brilliant Thinking

I’ve been using Live Mesh recently, through the alpha (tech preview) and now into the public beta. In general I am very pleased with the way it works and the fact that it does work (see previous post “Cloud Storage: On SugarSync, DropBox & Live Mesh“).

However, there is one feature I have struggled with as it’s not entirely intuitive - and that is synchronising folders between two (or more) computers and being able to retain the same directory path to the files on all machines.

This is something that SugarSync did well - it assumed the same path on connected machines. DropBox worked beneath its own equivalent of “My Documents” and achieved the same.

However, Live Mesh requires more user intervention to achieve the same results which is a tad frustrating.

In order for Live Mesh to correctly synchronise the same folder path on multiple machines you have to follow these steps:

• On Machine A, add the folder to Live Mesh BUT do not synchronise it with other machines in your Mesh (change the synchronisation option to “never for this device” in the dialogue box that opens when you add a folder to your Mesh).
• On Machine B, go to your “Live Mesh Folders” container that has been created. In there you will find shortcuts to both fully synchronised folders, AND greyed out (lighter blue) shortcuts to folders that have not been fully synchronised (ie the one you just set up on Machine A).
• Right-click (for WIndows users) on the greyed out folder and click “change sync settings”.
• (This is the only time that the current beta of Live Mesh will allow you to change the directory path for synchronisation, so you have to do it this way).
• Browse to the directory path you want this folder to be synchronised with and select/create the folder.
• Make sure you change when to synchronise this folder setting to include Machine B.

This will then replicate your original folder from Machine A to Machine B - or synchronise the data between the two machines if the folder already exists on Machine B also.

Remember that you can bypass the Live Desktop (the web mirror) at this stage by selecting “never for this device” against the Live Desktop. This will enable peer-to-peer synchronisation between computers and not store anything in the Cloud (useful if you have more than 5Gb of data to synchronise).

If you don’t follow the steps above you will find the folder from Machine A appear on the desktop of Machine B. There is no way to move it once this happens - the best way to resolve it is to log in to your Live Desktop online and turn off synchronisation with Machine B. This will convert the Mesh folder (blue) into a regular folder (yellow) and you can then safely delete or merge it. Do not delete it while it is still connected to your Mesh or the original files on Machine A will also be deleted!

It’s anoying that you have to go through this process and can’t simply move folders on Machine B, or set an option to tell the Mesh to replicate the folder structure, or change the mapping on-the-fly from the “Live Mesh Folders”.

I hope this feature becomes available soon as it will make replication much easier and intuitive, but for now we’ll have to resort to the manual process outlined above.