Syncing .data folders Between Multiple Devices via Cloud Drive & symlinks

[PieBerger]

To u-he team and KVRers a like, is there any good reason why you would advise against me syncing .data e.g. Hive.data folders between my MacBook Air and Windows PC via symlinks and pCloud (cloud drive similar to Dropbox)? I'm using the laptop more and more for writing and it would be very convenient to be able to sync all of my presets between it and my main studio PC.

Thanks in advance!

[Viktor [TUC]]

From our FAQ section, hopefully that explains things a bit:

https://u-he.com/support/faq.html#how-to:cloud-sync

[Fannon]

Good to know, but I actually already sync my u-he data folder with OneDrive. At times, it confuses OneDrive a bit, but as long as I'm not using my two machines at the same time it seems to work well enough. But yeah, if you do that you also need to live and deal with the potential problems.

But generally, with u-he it works much better than with Arturia. There I gave up on it, caused just too many problems.

[PieBerger]

From our FAQ section, hopefully that explains things a bit:

https://u-he.com/support/faq.html#how-to:cloud-sync

Excellent, thanks Viktor!

[lokio]

Good to know, but I actually already sync my u-he data folder with OneDrive. At times, it confuses OneDrive a bit, but as long as I'm not using my two machines at the same time it seems to work well enough. But yeah, if you do that you also need to live and deal with the potential problems.

But generally, with u-he it works much better than with Arturia. There I gave up on it, caused just too many problems.

I'm going to try this. I think the convenience outweighs the risks.
Not sure if I'm going to sync the whole .data folders though.

[Fannon]

Good to know, but I actually already sync my u-he data folder with OneDrive. At times, it confuses OneDrive a bit, but as long as I'm not using my two machines at the same time it seems to work well enough. But yeah, if you do that you also need to live and deal with the potential problems.

But generally, with u-he it works much better than with Arturia. There I gave up on it, caused just too many problems.

I'm going to try this. I think the convenience outweighs the risks.
Not sure if I'm going to sync the whole .data folders though.

Same thought here. At first glance, I didn't see any problematic files in the u-he data folders, except "PresetDatabase" folders. Those contain binary sqlite databases and temp / lock files. But even you get a conflict there, you can just delete them and the plugins will re-create them. There's a (bit cumbersome) way to teach OneDrive to ignore certain files - but I was lazy to set it up and just put everything u-he into it.

The nice thing is that u-he plugins are very economic and efficient with the preset files and other data files.

[tasmaniandevil]

Same thought here. At first glance, I didn't see any problematic files in the u-he data folders, except "PresetDatabase" folders. Those contain binary sqlite databases and temp / lock files. But even you get a conflict there, you can just delete them and the plugins will re-create them.

You can delete the database if it gets corrupted by the cloud syncing process (and yes, this really can happen).

But please be aware that all the favourite markings are stored in the database, and you'll lose those if you delete the database.
Unless you back up the favourites. You can do this by Shift-dragging the favourites smart folder out of the plugin onto your desktop.

[Fannon]

But please be aware that all the favourite markings are stored in the database, and you'll lose those if you delete the database.
Unless you back up the favourites. You can do this by Shift-dragging the favourites smart folder out of the plugin onto your desktop.

Thanks @tasmaniandevil for pointing this out - that's indeed good to know.

It's probably not one of your priorities, just a thought / suggestion.

If you 1) also store the favorites assignment in plain text (maybe even as many individual files - one per preset?) and 2) move the database to a different folder than all the other text based data / presets - then syncing via OneDrive / DropBox would become much less error prone. Maybe with some additional checks from your side if conflicts have been created, you could make this a semi-official feature. It feels like you're already half-way there from the current state.

[PieBerger]

Same thought here. At first glance, I didn't see any problematic files in the u-he data folders, except "PresetDatabase" folders. Those contain binary sqlite databases and temp / lock files. But even you get a conflict there, you can just delete them and the plugins will re-create them.

You can delete the database if it gets corrupted by the cloud syncing process (and yes, this really can happen).

But please be aware that all the favourite markings are stored in the database, and you'll lose those if you delete the database.
Unless you back up the favourites. You can do this by Shift-dragging the favourites smart folder out of the plugin onto your desktop.

So I'm pretty well convinced that cloud syncing the .data folders between systems is not a sensible solution, however, I've thought of an alternative and would appreciate your comments on its viability. Here goes:

Cloud drive has a master u-he preset directory e.g. u-he Patch Cloud, with sub folders for each product e.g. Hive Cloud, Zebra Cloud and so on. I then use symlinks to point these sub folders to a corresponding sub folder within each of the UserPresets folders, found within the .data folder for each product.

I should mention that I use my machines exclusively i.e. I don't have my desktop and MacBook running simultaneously, so generally speaking I'm at a low risk of corruption from locked files etc.

[tasmaniandevil]

If you 1) also store the favorites assignment in plain text (maybe even as many individual files - one per preset?)

Favourites had actually been stored in a .txt file before we updated to our current preset browser system some years ago. I don't see us going back to the old text file version, sorry.

[tasmaniandevil]

So I'm pretty well convinced that cloud syncing the .data folders between systems is not a sensible solution, however, I've thought of an alternative and would appreciate your comments on its viability.

The problem is not so much the user presets folder, the bigger problem is the preset database.
If your cloud service is syncing or locking files at the same time the plugin tries to access them, there might be problems. The database could get corrupted.

If you absolutely must use cloud syncing, we recommend to disable all cloud syncing features as long as you are working on music projects and have your DAW opened. Only reactivate your cloud syncing service once the DAW has been quit.

[PieBerger]

So I'm pretty well convinced that cloud syncing the .data folders between systems is not a sensible solution, however, I've thought of an alternative and would appreciate your comments on its viability.

The problem is not so much the user presets folder, the bigger problem is the preset database.
If your cloud service is syncing or locking files at the same time the plugin tries to access them, there might be problems. The database could get corrupted.

If you absolutely must use cloud syncing, we recommend to disable all cloud syncing features as long as you are working on music projects and have your DAW opened. Only reactivate your cloud syncing service once the DAW has been quit.

Thanks for the explanation. I think I understand all of the risks now and can make an informed decision about what to do (or not do) going forward.

[Fannon]

If you 1) also store the favorites assignment in plain text (maybe even as many individual files - one per preset?)

Favourites had actually been stored in a .txt file before we updated to our current preset browser system some years ago. I don't see us going back to the old text file version, sorry.

Yeah I can understand. However, I'm not arguing that the .txt files should replace the database. It totally makes sense that you have introduced it. What I had in mind here was just to additinally write those .txt files as a backup from which the database can restore itself or resolve conflicts from.

[tasmaniandevil]

We introduced the import/export favourites function as a backup.
It's a manual backup though, something the user needs to actively do.
Maybe we should think about doing this automatically from time to time.

[Fannon]

Thanks, that would already be very helpful and give a bit of safety net!
Btw. just in general: I really love how you at u-he did the preset browser and the whole organization of presets. I'm not sure I know any other plugin which has such a powerful preset browser.

Btw. with OneDrive, it's correctly detecting that the DB files are in active use and it's not trying to sync it while the u-he plugin is running. However, I still did run into situations where OneDrive wasn't entirely sure and duplicated the DB file suffixed with the machine name. But so far, OneDrive did not break or corrupt any DB files.

2023-01-11 07_22_08-Microsoft OneDrive.png