The recent entry on a JPE launcher for dropbox reminded me that a portable app to keep files synchronized with cloud copies is a gap in the portable arsenal. A gap in more need of filling as the cloud revolution progresses.

I want an app that is free with free storage, fully portable, easy to set up and use, no .net, no java, and works in windows and in Linux under wine. A tall order I know. I would also like it to be open-source but that is probably asking too much.

I believe I have found one method with the file sharing portion of Opera Unite.

I am interested in other apps, opinions, experiences, and options. Unless I have missed something already here this would be a great addition to the database. If the Opera gambit pans out then perhaps a mention with the Opera listing would be helpful.

An FTP client?

You might find it hard to find a service that will store your files for free. I am paying US$7 a month for 10 GB of Rsync hosting.

If you have some webhosting space that can run PHP there are quite a few scripts that will give you a secure on-line storage portal, it won't synchronise though.

I wish they would have made Opera Unite work through FTP, then I might actually use it as I could control where my information goes.

Dropbox, spideroak, live mesh, ubuntu one, etc. all offer free synchronized storage, accent on the word synchronized. It's usually 2 gb or so which holds a bunch of documents. An ftp client misses the point entirely.

Hence the smiley face.

Spideroak runs from the commandline, that might be portable.

I've always wondered what the benefits of free accounts are to these companies, I imagine they perform some sort of anonymous analysis on your files and use it for other purposes, like Google does.

i've used some portable dropboxes and they've worked fine... call me old (still younger than a lot of you i think... still in school lol) but I prefer using ftp :S
They got a few ftp programs that looks almost exactly like windows folders with drag/drop too... Works like dropbox to me so I like it. Plus I can explore those public ftp sites too

> but I prefer using ftp :S

In its defense, FTP has a long list of good features. In terms of a network transport protocol, there are none faster and almost every device that has a network connection has FTP, so it has very broad support. It can handle paranoid firewalls, can resume sending in case of interruptions, and includes compression. Further, so many other protocols were built using or around FTP, its hard to talk about it as a single thing.

Its unfortunate that cloud-based services seem to have discarded this transfer model.

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I just don't really know how things like dropbox isn't like ftp...
I mean to me, aren't they they same thing, kind of? lol seems like dropbox is a fancy ftp rip off. You dont pick the site to go to but you still need login/password...
The sync thing... isn't it same as dragging things into the program and letting it upload? FTP's been automating things like this for years

If you just want a dropbox then FTP will work fine, but like the OP, a lot of people want synchronisation, this requires hashing the remote file to see if it has changed. To do this with FTP would mean downloading every file from the remote server so you can hash it locally every time you want to sync. AFAIK FTP does not provide for any sort of sync or storage of hashes in the protocol. If there was something that did this through FTP then it would all be handled in the FTP client software.

I presume pretty much all of these sync services either use Rsync or some sort of proprietary server-stored hash database to minimise data transfer.

oh :S I manually did the updating lol, Since some things I don't want synced... lol