Monday, January 25, 2010

Dropbox: Share Any Folder Outside My Dropbox

So, here was my only problem – If I wanted to sync a folder outside "My Dropbox", I had to copy the entire folder to the "My Dropbox" folder and keep doing that to imply the changes. So I needed an automatic way, which will link the folder of my file system to the "My Dropbox" so that, any changes made to those folders will automatically simultaneously reflect upon the link inside the "My Dropbox".
The Link Shell Extension performs exactly what i intended.
The logic is, the NTFS file system implimented in the windows version from XP onwards own a feature named HardLink. This features allows multiple copies of a same file or folder to exist in different locations. In other words, they are HardLinked to the source file/folder.
The Link Shell Extension lets you hardlink several folders. So we make a use of that and Hardlink any folder we want to the "My Dropbox" so that the changes keeps being reflected there..

I think you've already guessed that you need a Dropbox account first. So, Get it here..

Now, first get yourself a copy of The Link Shell Extension(835KB).
And you also need a dependency to be filled. Download and install vcredist_x86.exe for Vs2005 Sp1 (2.6 Mb).

Install the LSE. then browse to any folder you’d like to link with "My Dropbox. Right click on the folder and select “Pick Link Source”."


Then goto the location where "My Dropbox" is and right click it and select “Drop As..” => “Junction”..


Thats it. Now open "My Dropbox" and you'll see that there's a new folder named "Junction to ", click it and you'll see the exact copy of the files/folders you had in the source location.
Now just keep working on those folders and they’ll keep syncing to your Dropbox. ^_^