Synchronising Eudora using Dropbox?

[Mark]

Hi
I have two Windows 7 machines running Eudora 7.1 with accounts configured for POP3. I use the second machine (laptop) only very occasionally if I'm travelling.

As needs arise I've been synchronising my laptop to my PC by manually coppying the mailbox files, embedded folder, and attachments folder from one machine to the other, not very elegant but it works.

I'm wondering if I could synchronise it automatically using Dropbox. I only have Dropvox Basic so I can't use their 'Smart Sync' tool. I'm thinking I could relocate my Eudora Data folder from C:\users\name\appdata\roaming to my dropbox folder and change the Eudora shortcut to this new location. I'd also move the attachments folder to Dropbox.

Would this be a workable solution or have I missed something?

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Post by Mark
I'm wondering if I could synchronise it automatically using Dropbox. I only have Dropvox Basic so I can't use their 'Smart Sync' tool. I'm thinking I could relocate my Eudora Data folder from C:\users\name\appdata\roaming to my dropbox folder and change the Eudora shortcut to this new location. I'd also move the attachments folder to Dropbox.
Would this be a workable solution or have I missed something?

Interference concerns... Many of these "cloud" "backup" systems rely
upon copy-on-change (and play hob with things like databases that do
constant open/modify/close of data/index files -- including sometimes
blocking the actual application from getting to its own data!).

Eudora first downloads emails to a spool directory, then processes the
downloaded spool before copying to MBX files AND updating the associated
TOC file, and deleting the spool file. That's three files that are
undergoing mixed read/write cycles that could be interrupted if the cloud
storage locks any file while doing its copy.

Cloud backup works best for static files -- or apps that open/read the
entire file, close it... Later open/(over)write/close the entire file at
once.

This is part of what the "leave mail on server" option is meant for --
to allow multiple applications to fetch messages, usually with one
application given priority for when to delete the server copy (or by
age...)