Just don't let them directly sync the folder which contains your main ComicBase Database. If you'd like to direct your ComicBase's Backups (under Setup > Preferences in ComicBase) to a folder that one of these services syncs, that's just fine-in fact, it could be a great backup for you in case your computer's drive fails. In OneDrive's case, go to the OneDrive control panel and either turn off synching of the Documents folder, or move your ComicBase Database to a location which isn't being directly synched by OneDrive. If you decide to use one of these services with ComicBase, be sure to avoid letting it sync the folder your have your active database in. In that cases, the server could conclude that the copy of your work they already have on their server is more recent than the one on your local computer, and attempt to sync up the server copy over your local copy, effectively throwing out the work you just did on your local computer. The real danger, however, comes if your computer's clock gets out of sync with the clock on the OneDrive (or Google or Dropbox) server. Moreover, since databases are loaded in pieces from disk into memory as they're used, the disk copy being backed up is likely not a complete picture of your database-it may not even be an openable copy-so all that network activity is generally for nothing until the database is closed. Since database files tend to be quite large (in ComicBase's case, almost 1 GB in size), and they change every time you open or use them to make even the smallest change, having your active ComicBase Database file in a synched folder like this will result in a huge amount of network activity. Important: Don't Put Your Active Database in the Synched Folder This means that OneDrive will often take control of that folder and start backing it up every single time you open a ComicBase Database. This can be a real problem for ComicBase users, since the ComicBase Database typically resides inside the Human Computing\ComicBase Databases folder inside your Documents folder. Unfortunately, Microsoft OneDrive, as it frequently comes preinstalled, will attempt to take over your main Documents folder without asking-even going so far as to remap the content from your Documents folder into a special "OneDrive\Documents" folder. I.e., the "Dropbox" folder if you use Dropbox-so you'd have to intentionally copy something into that folder if you wanted to have the service manage it. Most of these sharing programs use a separate folder as their magical "synched" folder. Similarly, it'll automatically download a copy from the server if it sees that the copy on your hard drive is older than what the server has. Basically, just by copying files to particular folders on your hard drive, the sharing software takes it as a signal to upload it to the server. What all these programs are designed to do is to automatically back-up and sync certain folders on your computer to a server somewhere, so that you can easily share files with others, or have a backup in case something happens to your computer's hard drive. With ever-increasing speeds for internet speeds, cloud backup solutions such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft's OneDrive are becoming increasingly popular-sometimes they're even pre-installed on new computers, or auto-installed when you activate other software like Office 365. There's also a YouTube Video Pete discusses this here: Using ComicBase with Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive Spoiler Alert: OneDrive Pulls Some Sneaky Stuff that Can Cause Trouble If You're Not Careful! If you ever get errors using the ComicBase software with errors relating to your database being locked or busy, read on. This particle article was originally pulled from a newsletter that Pete wrote that's worth sharing.
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