Getting SugarSync to work with USB drives on a Mac

IMPORTANT NOTE: SEE WARNING AT END

Cloud based file syncing tools like Dropbox and SugarSync are great ways to share files across multiple computers.  I pay for extra storage on SugarSync, and it is the primary tool I use.  (I have Dropbox at the free level, but mostly for sharing files with other people and with apps that can use it as a sort of lingua franca of syncing).

I have a lot of disk storage in external USB drives, and out of the box, on the Mac, SugarSync refuses to sync external drives.  Since the USB drives are not being used as transient storage, in my case that really doesn't make much sense.

So this is a trick I use to fool SugarSync into syncing them.  It relies on a capability the Mac has in its OS that is not usually understood by users:  Symbolic Links, aka "Make Alias".  Here's how I use it to move a directory off of my hard disk:

• First, I create and sync a directory on my internal disk.  Let's call it "Bar", and it's in the directory "Foo".  
• When SugarSync isn't doing anything (all files are in sync), I quit SugarSync.  
• I copy "Foo" to my external USB drive. (It has to be the parent directory of the directory being synced).
• I rename the "Foo" on my internal drive to "Foo SAVED"
• I right click on "Foo" on my external drive
• Pick "Make Alias" from the pop-up menu.  That creates "Foo Alias"
• Drag "Foo Alias" back to the same directory "Foo" was in on the internal drive
• Rename "Foo Alias" back to "Foo"
• Restart SugarSync

One last thing: SugarSync doesn't detect changes as I edit files.  Instead, I have to restart the app and it picks up all changes that I have made since the last restart.  This works for me where I have a primary computer I do all the work on and just need to snapshot things on a regular, but not continuous, basis.

That's it.  After I am completely confident that the new "Foo/Bar" on my external drive is syncing properly, I will delete "Foo SAVED".

WARNING:

Needless to say, this is not supported by SugarSync.  It could break in any update.  It could just not work for you.  It could delete all the files in the affected directory.  You are on your on with this.  The best I can say is "It works for me, in my configuration, as far as I know".