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Is Google Drive safe to use with TntConnect?

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First published by:
Troy Wolbrink
on 18 Jun 2013
Last revision by:
Troy Wolbrink
on 25 Aug 2021
6 people found this article useful.

100% of people found this useful
Is Google Drive safe to use with TntConnect?

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When you open your database on Google Drive, TntConnect might prompt you with a dialog like this:

The reason for this warning is that Google Drive is safe to use with TntConnect as long as you only use TntConnect on one computer.  And most of the time Google Drive is used to sync between more than one computer.  So most of the time, it's NOT SAFE to use Google Drive with your TntConnect database.

Do not use Google Drive to synchronize your database between multiple computers.  If more than one person at a time makes changes to TntConnect, Google Drive might keep the changes of one person and will throw away the changes made by others.  Thus TntConnect isn’t even given the opportunity to synchronize the changes made by others.  This is not good. Google Drive might, for example, throw away those important notes from your recent phone calls without warning, and they are now gone forever (if you accidentally opened TntConnect while your spouse also had TntConnect open).

If you'd like to synchronize your database between multiple computers, use Dropbox.  With Dropbox, if more than one person at a time opens TntConnect and makes changes, Dropbox will keep the changes of one person, and it will create “conflicted copy” files for the others.  TntConnect is able to synchronize with these “conflicted copy” files so that no changes are lost.

Click here to learn more about using TntConnect with Dropbox.

Recent Comments

By: Dan Dlugos Posted on 15 Aug 2013 9:49 PM

Does anyone have experience using Microsoft Sky Drive?

By: MaximeRobert Posted on 27 Mar 2014 3:06 PM

Thank you for the heads up regarding Google's data synchronization. My limited experience has shown the same issues were present in Microsoft Sky Drive, but perhaps it's been patched since I found it.

Maxime Référencement

www.egga-referencement.ch

By: BrandonJernigan Posted on 29 Mar 2016 2:27 PM

Hi are these any updates on whether or not TNT now works with Google Drive now?  This post looks like it's from 2013 and I'm wondering if Google has made any changes to how Google Drive syncs in the last few years.  Or how about Microsoft's new OneDrive?

Thanks!

By: Troy Wolbrink Posted on 21 May 2016 3:42 AM

Brandon, you're right.  The time has probably come to retest this.  It would be nice if there were more good safe options.  I'll keep this in mind.

By: Rick Hudson Posted on 22 Jun 2016 7:26 PM

Our mission agency is moving toward using Google drive extensively. At the same time we are encourage our personnel to utilize TntConnect.  Knowing whether this synchronization conflict is resolved or not would be very beneficial. Thanks.

By: Troy Wolbrink Posted on 24 Jun 2016 3:53 AM

Hi Rick,

There are two issues I have with using TntConnect on Google Drive.  One is that I noticed (a few years ago) that sometimes I'd make a change on the same TNT database (on Google Drive) on two computers at the same time, and Google Drive made one computer's version win, and the other computer's version was lost.  No conflict file was created from which TntConnect could glean the other person's changes.  Anyone can retest this scenario.  You just need two computers with the same Google Drive on them, open TntConnect at the same time (same database in Google Drive).  Make changes to both and close each.  Try this dozens of times and confirm that a conflict file is produced each time.  If someone were to run this test and confirm that Google has fixed it, I'd be glad to remove the warning in TntConnect.

The other problem I have with Google Drive is that when you close TntConnect, it uploads the entire database file if you made any changes.  Dropbox only uploads the portions of the file that changed (if any), so it uses much less bandwidth, it uploads changes much faster, and therefore reduces the chance of conflict files.

--Troy

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