Chronosync- How to install and configure for B2

Installing ChronoSync

ChronoSync is a third-party sync tool that runs on macOS and supports B2 Cloud Storage.

You can download ChronoSync from their webpage here: https://www.econtechnologies.com/downloads/downloads.html

Click on ChronoSync and then download

Once the download is finished, run the installer program to complete the installation.

Choosing B2 Buckets and Application Keys

Now, you’ll need to choose which B2 Bucket and Application Key to use with ChronoSync. ChronoSync supports existing Buckets and Application Keys. If you don’t have one already you can follow these steps to create them.  

To create a new Bucket, login to your Backblaze account, https://www.backblaze.com.

Under the “B2 Cloud Storage Menu”, click “Buckets” and then select “Create a Bucket”.

Give the bucket a name (ex. ChronoSync030420) and click “Create a Bucket”.  Remember the name of the Bucket must be globally unique, not just unique within your account.

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To create a new Application Key, click on App Keys under the B2 Cloud Storage menu and select “Add a New Application Key”.

Enter the name of the key. Select if the key has access to all buckets, or only to the one you created, by selecting it from the drop-down list.  Click “Create New Key”

Your new KeyID and ApplicationKey will be shown only once, so make sure you copy it to a secure location.

Setup and Configure ChronoSync to use B2 on Mac

In the ChronoSync app, click on Create New Synchronization Task.

Then enter a Task name.

Next, select the source folder, Synchronization options, and your destination.

Under Source Target, we are going to choose a local folder. Click on Choose and browse to the desired folder, which in this case will be the Documents folder for the current user.

Select the folder to synchronize to Backblaze B2.

Next, choose your synchronization preferences.  In this example, we are going to choose the default “Left-right”.

Enter the Application Key into ChronoSync

Now we need to configure the connection to B2.  Under Destination Target click on the drop-down menu next to Connect To: and select “Create connection”.

Then fill out your profile name, choose Backblaze B2 for connection type, and enter your Key ID and Application Key.  Then click Test to verify everything was entered correctly.

If everything is tested correctly, then click Next to adjust the Advanced parameters.

Click on Custom request timeout and change it to be 120 seconds.  Then click on Large upload block size, set it to be 100 MiB, and click Save

Now that we are connected to our B2 account, click on Choose to select which Bucket to synchronize to.

Select your bucket, in this case ChronoSync030420, which we created earlier, and click Select.

Next click on Options in the left navigation bar.

For best results, It is recommended to change Package handling from Standard to Dissect.  If you have an available bandwidth that you want to use to speed up the transfer rate, you can do so by increasing the number of Concurrent Operations. A value between 6-12 is suggested.

When you're done, click the Save button in the top menu.

To automate the synchronization job, click on the “Auto” icon in the upper right corner of the menu. You can configure the job to run automatically using a variety of options to meet your business requirements.

When you click on the Add to Schedule, a scheduling dialogue box will appear, and a Schedule Task Manager screen, showing currently scheduled tasks if any.

Click Add to add this schedule, and you will see it appear in the Schedule Task List box.

On the main screen click Save one more time.

To validate your synchronization ob, from the main menu, right-click on your job and choose “Open and Validate”

Review the validation tasks and click Validate to start.

Once the validation has finished, right-click on the job again and choose “Open and Synchronize”  to start the job.