More and more of my friends start to use Dropbox to sync files across multiple computers. It is an excellent utility but has a major drawback, it only sync files inside the “My Dropbox” folder. A lot of people are surprise when I tell them this is not the case, you can sync any files and folders you want. Here is what you need to do:
You need to create something call a ‘ symbolic links ‘ between the “My Dropbox” folder and the folder on your drive that you want to sync. Symbolic links is kind of like a “shortcuts” but at a filesystem level. It sounds complicated but actually very easy to setup.
If the computer is already running Vista or Win7, the command is “MKLINK” and is already build into the system.
If it is a XP computer, you will need to download and install the command “JUNCTION” from Microsoft. Just download the file, uncompressed it and place it under “c:\Windows”.
Now to setup the link, either use one of the folowling commands:
junction “c:\My Documents\My Dropbox\DesiredFolder or Filename” “C:\Path\To\DesiredFolder or Filename”
mklink /D “c:\My Documents\My Dropbox\DesiredFolder or Filename” “C:\Path\To\DesiredFolder or Filename”
Usage Notes:
- The link will be lost after the computer power off, therefore you should put the command into a batch file and have it run on your computer start up. The batch file need to be run before Dropbox start, otherwise dropbox will report an error.
- The name inside (1st path) the “My Dropbox” folder does not need to match with the name of the file on your system (2nd path). For example you want to sync the folders “c:\My Documents” on your work computers but you don’t want it to be mix with our personal “My Document” folder already in drop box. What you can do is use the command: mklink /D “c:\My Documents\My Dropbox\My Documents At Work” “C:\Path\My Documents”.
- Don’t forget you will need to restart Dropbox before it will pick up the changes.
