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Syncplicity Alternatives

Please note that the email chain below is a specific conevrsation based on the needs of a single department on campus. It is, however, a good start to understanding what alternatives are (and will be) available to you once Syncplicity is retired on campus. If you have questions or would like to start your own conversation with us regarding your transition away from Syncplicity, feel free to send us a Trouble Report via the link below:

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/AboutUs/ContactUs


We wanted to follow up our conversation with a list of alternatives to Syncplicity...
 
1. OneDrive for Business
  •  If folks are looking to share documents with students or only a handful of people, this is probably the best route. Like with Syncplicity, you will be able to share items with specific people via direct links, emails, etc, and you can specialize permissions as needed.
  •  Please note that you will need an Office365 account (can be acquired through the university) to set this up though. We can always send instructions to walk you through that process, if need be. In the end, OneDrive, we believe, is a better application for you as you'll get 1 TB of space as opposed to 100GBs.
 
2. Setting Up a New Share Drive
 
  •    If you are working with confidential data, a new share drive is the safest bet. This guarantees that your data is backed up to tape by us and on a campus machine as well. If you have a need for specialized permissions, we can work through that with you to ensure people can only access what's for them to see.
  •    The main limitation to consider with an ECN share drive though is space. We can only offer a drive up to 100GBs in size.
 
3. Data Depot
  •  If you're looking for on campus storage that will exceed 100GBs, Data Depot charges $150 per year per TB. Your data will be mirrored and secure if you choose this resource.
  •  RCAC also offers 100GBs of free space for each research group on campus if you'd like to try the resource before purchasing a full TB. Or, if you think you can manage with 100GBs, they are happy to give that to you for good.
  •  More information: https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/storage/depot/
 
4. PURR
 
  •  PURR is the archival-grade storage provided by ITaP and the Libraries. More information is available at: https://purr.purdue.edu/
A very general comparative overview can be found at the Libraries site: http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/DataStorage

(There is also a downloadable PDF linked at the top of that page for convenience)
Let us know if you have any questions about these options. We're happy to assist any way that we can.
 
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One question about the OneDrive application. Can I sync my documents folder without placing the folder
inside of the OneDrive folder on my computer? Syncplicity allows you to pick a particular folder to sync
without moving the location.
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We did some testing here in the office to get a sense of whether OneDrive can sync individual folders scattered throughout a file system. So far, it
looks like that may not be possible because of the application we use to map OneDrive on your computer-- WebDrive. WebDrive sets up a "share drive"
on your computer for OneDrive which then allows you to drag and drop whatever files you'd like to sync. However, that means your files do have
to be centrally located in order to sync.
 
In this case, your best bet is to create a "My Documents" folder in your OneDrive share and copy the files manually. It's a few more steps than the
Syncplicity setup though. We'll keep testing and let you know if we figure out a better alternative, but that's what we have so far.
 
Let us know if you have questions.
 

Last Modified: Feb 21, 2022 12:55 am US/Eastern
Created: Apr 20, 2017 2:07 pm GMT-4 by admin
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