One of the favorite things I like to hear from developers when some horrible and embarrassing bug manifests itself is “It’s a feature not a bug.” It’s a joke of course, but it’s unlikely Microsoft developers will be doing any joking around as they try to control the damage from a recent bug that autodeletes users’ most important files.
Microsoft FolderShare allows users to back up and synchronize files across multiple machines. Generally only important files, that need to be accessed regularly, are synchronized. The bug, which Microsoft told users about via an email and notice on the site after they fixed it on December 7, auto-deleted files that contain special characters (such as accents, trademark signs, etc.)
“Do NOT delete files from your FolderShare Trash folder until you are certain that you were not affected by this problem” Microsoft said to users. The bug occurred beginning on December 3 and was fixed on December 7.
This isn’t hugely damaging (most files were unaffected), but Foldershare is under significant competitive pressure from a horde of startups like Switzerland-based Wuala. Losing user trust from hiccups like this will only help those startups get market share. Perhaps, like FolderShare, Microsoft will eventually buy one or more of them, too.
No product is completely without bugs – in fact, to expand on that, no-one ever does anything on a large scale without making some sort of oversight.
Forgetting that there are other languages than English, and that some of them have accents on their characters, is quite a good one though. (In fact, even English-speaking businesses with properly-spelled loanwords in their filenames like café, Doppelgänger, etc, may be in for a nasty shock.)
and thats why google is owning microsoft. this sucks for people who lost important files because of the bug.
Speaking of bugs, I wish I still had my XP. Vista is killing me.
http://www.whatshottoday.com
My attitude is simple (and probably common). Given Microsoft’s quasi-monopoly position, it does not have the right to make mistakes like this. Let’s call it ethical zero tolerance. Other software creators, who must fight harder, or who work for free, have more latitude in this thinking. Since zero tolerance is somewhat tiring, I’ve found it’s easier just to ditch Microsoft’s products altogether.
Competitive pressures won’t nullify bugs.. but this is certainly not pretty, /ac.
Microsoft should leave such jobs to startups, they do it best and then get value for it when MS acquires. Its a win-win
Wasn’t that FolderShare, once a startup, already an acquired entity (by, of course, MSFT)
I don’t get it. Apple releases Leopard with a severe bug that destroys data when it’s moved over a LAN and it’s barely newsworthy. Microsoft makes a relatively minor oversight in a free utility (that most people don’t even know exists), which is corrected within 3 days and it’s worth writing about? Give me a break!
Are you people paid to bash Microsoft or what? Here’s a headline for you Michael: All software has bugs. Print that.
Syncing is complex. Foldershare does it better than I’ve ever seen and I rely on it daily. It’s free, though I would certainly pay for its functionality.
Microsoft hasn’t changed the product in years. I’m hoping they will see the value of the product and push it to the next level. I think many many people will find it useful.
Now you feel my Leoptard pain!
When is Microsoft finally going to make Foldershare Vista compatible? It’s the main reason I haven’t switched over from XP yet. Come on Microsoft!!
The FolderShare has its advantages, but we need to know how to use this tool.
@11 Frank, I am using Foldershare on Vista, in fact I am sync-ing between Vista and XP machines… not entirely without problems, but more or less reliably.
@4
AMEN!
#2 – Did Google own Microsoft when some people lost their entire Gmail history for no reason, and Google took absolutely no responsibility?
Wuala, really? It’s really odd that BeInSync isn’t mentioned in this post. BeInSync is much more well-known and seems it is much more popular than FolderShare. Not to mention, it has a much more comprehensive and stable service, seeing that Microsoft really let FolderShare go for the last couple of years. See http://www.beinsync.com.
BeinSync really needs to stop spamming every post mentioning Foldershare…
Mike,
>but Foldershare is under significant competitive pressure from a horde of startups like Switzerland-based Wuala.
That company hasn’t even launched and it requires SIGNIFICANT resources (space on your HDD, bandwidth and connectivity) to run. Do you really think that MS is scared of them?
We are German start-up offering easy Outlook synchronization for multiple PCs. Currently we use FolderShare as a transport service for our product to sync our files over the Internet. Even though our files names are free from characters such “è”, “ü” etc., many customers called us and asked for help in the past seven days. We were overrun from support requests due to FolderShare.
That’s why we started to develop our own peer-to-peer service. It’s still beta – subscription at http://www.syncing.net. We work hard to provide a better product for easy file and Outlook synchronization.
I don’t see why they can’t get it right. Making file sync software is easy.
Microsoft has products with robust sync. Foldershare it seems is just not one of them.
Reliability is something that is either designed in, or just the time between failures. Folderhsare has established which category it is in. – a long outage followed by this latest mess. Not good.
I thought foldershare was awesome, It’s very disapointing to realise that it can’t be counted upon.
I think I need a backup solution for my backup solution
I work with BeInSync for over 2 years now. They recently added online backup with Amazon and I upgraded to 50GB service as well. I also sync between all my computers – 4 of them XP and Vista.
I use All Sync, i am not too sure abt this issue, but you can try allsync as well. I am using it since last 4 months only…
SyncDroid is making some big promises, especially about being able to undo this sort of mistake. Don’t know when they’ll finally release, though:
http://www.syncdroid.com/
I’ve been using FolderShare for a while and have found it great. Just have to remember to keep backups anyway.