Time Taken to Synchronize Dropbox to the Desktop is Inefficient

Discussions about syncing data via Bluetooth, Dropbox, FTP, and using CSWeb
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khurshid.arshad
Posts: 571
Joined: July 9th, 2012, 11:32 am
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan

Time Taken to Synchronize Dropbox to the Desktop is Inefficient

Post by khurshid.arshad »

Dear Team

I am using dropbox for our current survey. The problem we encountered was that when we tried synchronizing the files from dropbox to the desktop it took more than 30 minutes. I have 1295 households worth of data in the dropbox. I am currently using the 7.0.2 version and I have tried the 7.1.0 version as well. The internet connection is 7 Mbps.

Please advice.

Thanks.
a.
josh
Posts: 2399
Joined: May 5th, 2014, 12:49 pm
Location: Washington DC

Re: Time Taken to Synchronize Dropbox to the Desktop is Inefficient

Post by josh »

I would expect a full download from the Dropbox to be slow since it has to download every file and there will be one file generated every time a tablet syncs. That said, 30 minutes for 1295 households is slower than I would expect. How many files are there in the Dropox/CSPro/datasync/<dictionary>/data folder?

Instead of downloading the entire data file each time you should instead open the data file you downloaded previously in DataViewer and use the synchronize function from the menu. This will download only the new case that have been uploaded to the server since the last time you synchronized so it should be much faster.
khurshid.arshad
Posts: 571
Joined: July 9th, 2012, 11:32 am
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan

Re: Time Taken to Synchronize Dropbox to the Desktop is Inefficient

Post by khurshid.arshad »

Dear Josh

Thank you for prompt reply. Currently i have 5106 files and after successful synchronization i got 1726 cases.
thanks.
a.
josh
Posts: 2399
Joined: May 5th, 2014, 12:49 pm
Location: Washington DC

Re: Time Taken to Synchronize Dropbox to the Desktop is Inefficient

Post by josh »

You have a lot of files given the number of cases. Your interviewers are probably syncing frequently. The total time is not too surprising given the number of files. It takes about .5 seconds to download a single file on my connection which means 120 files/minute. Now that you have done it once, using synchronize instead of download should be fast since it will only download the updates.
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