AeroFS - File Sync Without Servers

Our whole company has been using AeroFS exclusively for our network drives, and it's worked extremely well! It's great because we can share files of any size, and it seamlessly updates between all machines.

I'd also love to try it - if anyone has an extra invite, mind sending one to hn@mikehearn.net?

AeroFS looks like an interesting service, I remember reading the earlier entry about them and their blog (i think it was on posterous at the time).

It reminded me of two projects --

Wuala which allowed seemless syncing between machines, as well as donating storage to gain the benefit of "cloud storage" for your files. They eventually went the route of offering storage space and got bought by Lacie.

The second is much older (mid/earlyish 90s) that had the same p2p based donate space on your drive and fragments of your files will be stored on other connected machines.

The sharing and other similar features will be interesting to see how those are implemented.

You may be interested in git-annex.

http://julien.danjou.info/blog/2011.html#Handling_my_music_c...

AeroFS isn't as refined as Dropbox, but the flexibility of cross-computer sync makes it pretty ideal for large media storage. I have almost 200GB of photos, and dropbox really wasn't an option for that. They release updates to the product every few weeks, so it's getting better.

Gripes: 1- It's a lot chattier than dropbox. This could be a tradeoff for being a distributed protocol, but it's something that dropbox seemed to improve in over time as well. 2- Iffy compatibility with Lion: I often get "AeroFS is already running" messages. 3- They recently added the needed ability to change the location of the AeroFS Library, but I'd love to modify the location of each Share in the Library. 4- This is likely beyond the project's scope, but I'd love to be able to access my files without syncing in a pinch. 5- Better activity view: Dropbox's menu icon changes to indicate activity. I find this useful, so I can shut it off if my connection is slow. AeroFS's icon doesn't change, and to view activity, you need to open Preferences.

Positives: 1- Unrestricted size, great for large media libraries 2- Seems very fast, especially over LAN 3- I love how you can set up multiple shares - one for a workgroup, one for personal projects, and one for photos, and you can sync those among any computers you want. 4- It makes offsite backup effortless 5- Auto-updates are great