file sharing 2 GB limit?

[Santos]

Is there any way around the 2GB limit for sharing a folder. I have an
external drive full of picture, some 25 GB worth, I'd like to share the drive
as a folder, or even a folder within the drive that is larger than 2 GB. How
can I do this?

 

[GWON]

When you work around this limit you will experience severe performance
degradation. Depending on the rate of changes and the speed of the systems
involved you could effectively render Groove inoperable.

All of that having been said,

1 - Establish an empty space. That is a File Sharing space that points to
an empty folder.
2 - Invite all users and devices that will have access to the space.

3- Add files at a rate of 100 Meg chunks until the entire collection is part
the of File Sharing space.

Once you surpass the hardcoded limits you will not be able to invite any new
machines to the space.

Startup time will become very long.

File Sharing spaces replicate the files into a hidden Groove file store.
That file store will be about the same size as the folder tree you are
sync'ing with Groove. Groove does use an efficient file compression
technique but like all compression technologies does very little to compress
already compressed files like .zip, .mp3 or .jpg files.

I cannot recommend strongly enough against this process. While I did not
lose any data when I did this with my 25GB mp3 collection, Groove eventually
became unusable and I had to remove it and clean it out. I then had to
reinstall and fetch all of my spaces, less the offending space.

 

[Bug Menot]

This is old but it's still popular with Google so...

My solution was Windows Live FolderShare. It's a beta product and it's still pretty primitive but "Each library can contain a maximum of 10,000 files and each file cannot exceed 2GB". That's a lot better than Groove. So far it's worked wonderfully for syncing my 25 GB music collection.

 

[Justin Rodino]

FolderShare might be able to do 10,000 files, but in actuality, if you
have 10,000+ files associated with one project, I think project
management might need looking in to That's quite a few files with
one project - which is what Groove is tailored for. Also, FolderShare
is an end-user tool and not nearly as collaborative as Groove is.
FolderShare is just that - shares folders. With Groove, you have many
more options and a lot more flexibility. FolderShare is for the home
user whereas Groove is an Enterprise tool...

Does this make more sense?

Justin

 

[Mitigation Elf]

Hi Justin,

I have been reading several of your recent responses and they have greatly
helped me.

My work team uses Groove extensively every day as we are a remote team (from
each other and from any of our corporate offices) and work with clients who
must collaborate - each having their own secure servers. Groove is the
perfect solution.

My personal computers run Vista. One is a 32 bit system, the other is 64. I
have the Groove 07 product on my 64 bit system and use 3.1 (our "official"
version at work) on my 32 bit system and on my work-owned XP lapotp. On top
of those version issues, I run Office 07 on my personal computers, Office 03
on work computers.

I have been trying to find some good way to syncronize files on all of the
machines on which I work. Foldershare works ok, but is akward and I can't
download it to my work computers. SkyDrive seems bulky to me and it is
dificult to upload large numbers of files at once. Office Live Workspaces are
getting there, but again, the large numbers of files uploading and
downloading is akward and work sees it as a security threat.

Using Groove file sharing workspaces is really the most ideal for me with
the drag-n-drop functionality and when I change a file on my work desktop, it
is automatically updated on my personal laptop. My challenge is, of course,
(and I had no clue until I read one of your recent responses about Groove not
working with 64 bit processors) getting the file sharing workspaces to
download to my 64 bit computer.

Do you have any suggestions for a work-around? Any visibility on when Groove
will be fully functional with 64 bit systems? or when it will truly integrate
with Outlook?

Thank You in advance!

ME

 

[Justin Rodino]

Hi there,

One thing I'll point out that you need to be aware of is if you share
accounts, you need to make sure all Groove versions are running on the
same platform - i.e. Groove 2007. As for the question though about file
sharing - if you create a "File Sharing" workspace - this won't work at
all with x64 (same as in explorer view and clicking the Folder Sync
button) - however if you use a standard workspace template, depending on
how much functionality you want and how lucky you can be with the x64
machine, the files workspace usually works quite efficiently.

Alternatively, as I do, due to needing Groove functionality on various
devices, I have VMware Fusion running on my Mac with a Groove account
tied to a vanilla XP 32 bit with only Office & Groove running. Not
really an ideal solution, but until Groove works on Mac I'm pretty
stuck. Same is true for x64 hardware in certain instances, as you're
finding out :-Z

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, let us know!

Good luck,

Justin

 

[Mitigation Elf]

Hey Justin,

Actually I have had good success "Grooving" everything between the 3.1
version and the 2007 version - you just have to tell 2007 to allow it under
Options/Preferences/Security.

I did find what seems to be a good, actually functioning work-around for
getting the file-sharing workspaces on my x64 machine.

I installed Live Mesh on my desktop (which is running Home Premium 32bit and
Groove 3.1) and my laptop (Ultimate 64 bit and Groove 2007). I then added my
Filesh sharing workspaces to my Mesh and all of the files are now transferred
and I am in a weird, disjointed way getting the files I need shared among all
of my computers.

It should be simpler and My vote is for Microsoft to make up its mind about
all of the diferent tools out there or at the very least give better
documentation about the purpose and intended use of the various file-sharing
applications - SkyDrive, Groove, FolderShare, LiveMesh, Office Live (which
seems to be an early pre-cursor to total Groove integration across all Office
platforms - which I hear is already in the early versions of the next office
release.)

Thank you for your help!