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As I work daily on my office computer and home laptop in a Windows 8 environment, I have been using an external disk as a backup/sync unit: semi automatically, once the disk is connected, a bidirectional sync is done. This helps making data portable and gives an extra backup:

Office data <-> External disk data <-> Laptop data

Downside: you need to perform synchronization each time you have updated data on the computers. Once you forget to backup/sync, you're out of sync.

Solution: use the external disk as main storage, while internal disks are backup units. In this scenario, the external disk holds the most updated data; only in case the external disk is unavailable (forgotten somewhere), you'd be working "offline". Subsequent sync would update data on the external disk.

As for the synchronizing process, you would configure the PCs to sync on the fly, as soon as an update occurs on the external disk, or on demand.

Your thoughts? Any better idea?

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  • I use software that supports being ran in the taskbar, which uses a scheduled task, which rans hourly. It takes no processing power if the external drive is missing because the scheduled job fails. GoodSync is the software I personally use. Another option is cloud storage like Skydrive.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 18, 2013 at 12:33
  • I have tested multiple sync software, Synctoy and PureSync among others. Currently I also use cloud storage to sync (google + syncdocs), however with thousands files it is not a comfortable strategy (slow)
    – Riccardo
    Oct 18, 2013 at 12:45
  • I would continue to use programs like Puresync and have them continiously and automatically keep all sources update.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 18, 2013 at 12:54
  • Ramhound, probably yes, although the synchronization process would be external-disk-centric rather than internal
    – Riccardo
    Oct 18, 2013 at 14:52
  • The drawback is to always carry the external disk with you...
    – Riccardo
    Oct 24, 2013 at 14:36

2 Answers 2

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Why not set up a NAS?

You can buy small, 2-bay boxes for relatively cheap, and that allows for RAID redundancy protecting you from drive failure. Plug it into your router, or a small switch depending, and you're good to go. You've now got storage that's accessible from every PC on the network, no need to continually sync files, or physically move storage devices.

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  • The office PC an home laptop aren't on the same LAN...How would you sync that across the Internet? Far too slow...
    – Riccardo
    Oct 18, 2013 at 13:50
  • Ah my apologies, I completely misread that as 'home office'. Depending on how large the files you're working with are, besides what you're currently doing, the only other thing that comes to mind would be using using something like SyncToy, which you mentioned above, or a cloud service like Dropbox or Ubuntu One. Oct 18, 2013 at 13:59
  • @Riccardo There is no problem there, as you can configure a NAS to accept remote connections. Also, this post stackoverflow.com/questions/528298/rsync-for-windows has info on a Windows equivalent of a famous Linux utility, rsync, which is capable of checking version of the same file, and transmit only the parts which have been modified, which is of course ideal for slow internet connections Oct 18, 2013 at 15:35
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Wi-Fi hard drive like Corsair Voyager Air or Seagate Wireless Plus 1TB would be a great choice to setup a bidirectional sync unit.These gadgets can be used either as a wired or wireless NAS .For instance , the Voyager Air is also outfitted with a gigabit ethernet port, so you can use it as either a wired or wireless NAS.This way the data across office / home stays more or less same.

You may use crontab and rsync to shedule a backup to be done at office hours / home or come up with a really smart idea to backup as soon as an update is made.

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