I believe that if your computers are on the same network, it will do local computer-to-computer connections to speed up the file transfers and synchronization.

But (so far) not between drives connected to the same machine (such as internal and usb). If you know of a way to use BTS to do so, please share; it would eliminate yet another separate backup process and then I would only need BTS for everything.

BitTorrent is a protocol to exchange files between two machines. It isn't designed to synchronized between two folders on the same machine.

However, if you can run two instances of BitTorrent, each thinking it is on a different machine, I think you can synchronize between two folders on the same machine.

For example, if you run OS X Server and duplicate the BitTorrent Sync App, you can log in on two simultaneously active accounts and run one coppy of BitTorrent Sync on one account and another on the other account. Then select the folders to synchronize.

As another example, you can run Windows or OS X Server as guest operating systems in Parallels. You can then run BitTorrent Sync in the host OS X and run BitTorrent Sync in the guest OS (Windows or OS X Server), then select the folders to synchronize.

I wouldn't recommend all this effort to make it work that way, BTS doesn't currently support extended metadata (i.e. tags, Md/Spotlight data so it isn't a good backup solution. It's exceptionally good at what it is made for.

Thanks, Psych, and I should have thought of that myself, but I think Essadee is right in part. It would likely be more trouble than it is worth, since there are different small sets of files in question. This is not a full system mirror I am talking abotu.

On the other hand, I live in a multi-OS world and household, so any Mac based metadata is of little concern to me. So long as files have the base two to three file dates, that's all that really matters. And BTS also does three tier versioning (hidden), so there is that as well.

But thanks folks. I appreciate the bit of discussion.

Remember that it is still a BETA product.

Unfortunately, 8 months has passed and the really bad bug in BitTorrent Sync that causes text clips that transfers as blank files is still there. For those of us who work with text clippings a lot, it amazes me that this bug has not been fixed yet. Besides this serious problem, it is a GREAT utility.

The TextClipping Bug is not a bug in BitTorrent Sync. It is a Bug in Mac OS X that Apple has not corrected in years.

Text Clippings were introduced as a feature in Mac OS 9. It is a Mac specific feature.

Selected text can be dragged to the desktop of a Mac and stored as a .textClipping file. The problem is that the text is not stored in the Data Fork of the file - which is accessible to all Mac OS X applications and other operating systems. Instead it is stored in the Resource Fork of the file.

The Resource Fork of files is a Mac OS 1 to 9 legacy file system feature that is in remnant form in Mac OS X. It is not readable in other operating systems such as Windows and Linux. Apple created Packages to replace Resources Forks so that files can be more easily exchanged and used in other operating systems.

However, its one remaining remnant is in .textClipping files. Apple should have long ago changed text clippings to actual text files and stop using the resource fork for storing the data. It asked other developers years ago to do this. And it has to do this job itself. For example, it would be easy for text clippings to be converted to .rtf files instead which are more universally compatible across all operating systems.

OS X applications generally cannot read the resource fork. They view the .textClipping file as a 0 byte empty data file. Only the Finder and TextEdit and a few other apps can read the resource fork of a file.

BitTorrent Sync for Mac can include the optional code to read the resource fork of files so that files with resource forks can be synchronized between Macs. But adding such code makes no sense when files are suppose to be synchronized to Macs, Windows PCs, Linux, iPhones (which won't read resource forks), and other smartphones. Files with resource forks such as .textClippings are unreadable in other operating systems. And Files with resource forks are unreadable by the vast majority of Mac OS X Apps anyway.

My suggestion is to convert all .textClippings to actual text files where the data is in the data fork, not resource fork. This can be automated with a macro. Then the clippings can be synchronized with BitTorrent Sync.

Text Clippings can also simply be converted to files via the Services submenu or transferred for storage into a DevonThink or Together files or even stored in Evernote online. Storing them in Evernote would eliminate the need to synchronize them with BitTorrent Sync. Storing them in DevonThink or Together would allow you to synchronize the text clippings by synchronizing the DevonThink or Together file instead. The advantage of aggregating your text clippings in a DevonThink or Together file is that you would then have a way of more easily storing, organizing the text clippings and searching them.

I agree. I have had to move my virtual machines for Parallels and VirtualBox out of the folder I was syncing. Otherwise it is a very stable and very useful program.