I've had the luxury of 50GB free Dropbox space courtesy of an offer that came with my Android tablet, but that is now about to expire. I've been wanting to shift to something else anyway so now's the time.
But what do I pick? There are several options...
Objective: To be able to sync as much stuff as I like. I have no desire for a central repository (although I could set one up if needed); I prefer a peer to peer model. I'd really prefer a good sync mechanism (in particularly handling file deltas rather than having to upload a whole file if something changes). ARM compatibility is important. Android integration would be a big plus (eg I like that my phone automatically uploads photos to Dropbox, I'd like to move them to the new solution).
BTSync: Free only as in beer but otherwise looks pretty good. Syncthing (now called Pulse): Properly free. I think it meets all my criteria.
Any others I should consider? Any experiences to report?
On 20 October 2014 11:53, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
ARM compatibility is important.
As, unfortunately, is Windows compatibility, which I forgot to mention.
The ability to sync only some folders, and share some folders with others, is also important.
Have you looked at Google Drive? Good integration with Android, W****** and M**, pretty cheap as storage goes, and you can selectively share.
On 20 October 2014 11:55, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
On 20 October 2014 11:53, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
ARM compatibility is important.
As, unfortunately, is Windows compatibility, which I forgot to mention.
The ability to sync only some folders, and share some folders with others, is also important.
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On 20 October 2014 12:00, Ewan Slater ewan.slater@gmail.com wrote:
Have you looked at Google Drive? Good integration with Android, W****** and M**, pretty cheap as storage goes, and you can selectively share.
To be honest I like the idea of using something that doesn't put all my data onto someone else's servers. I don't have a fundamental problem with that (and do it in plenty of other situations) but Syncthing and BTSync give me the option to avoid that. It also means zero cost regardless of capacity.
Mark
On 20/10, Mark Rogers wrote:
To be honest I like the idea of using something that doesn't put all my data onto someone else's servers. I don't have a fundamental problem with that (and do it in plenty of other situations) but Syncthing and BTSync give me the option to avoid that. It also means zero cost regardless of capacity.
I can thoroughly recommend SyncThing. I've been using it for a few months now and it's wonderful.
Apparently it's called Pulse now. It has clients for everything you need (linux, windows, android).
Steve
On 20/10/14 12:36, Steve Engledow wrote:
On 20/10, Mark Rogers wrote:
To be honest I like the idea of using something that doesn't put all my data onto someone else's servers. I don't have a fundamental problem with that (and do it in plenty of other situations) but Syncthing and BTSync give me the option to avoid that. It also means zero cost regardless of capacity.
I can thoroughly recommend SyncThing. I've been using it for a few months now and it's wonderful.
Apparently it's called Pulse now. It has clients for everything you need (linux, windows, android).
Steve
Thanks for that, Steve. I like the look of Pulse.
I had a look at their site (thanks for the link) but there are some glaring omissions. I can't see how they are funding it (or going to fund it despite their crown-funding campaign coming up), and I can't see any mention of data limits, costs etc. As the man himself said, there's no such thing as free.
Any quick pointers please?
Cheers, Laurie.
On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 01:24:02PM +0100, Laurie Brown wrote:
On 20/10/14 12:36, Steve Engledow wrote:
On 20/10, Mark Rogers wrote:
To be honest I like the idea of using something that doesn't put all my data onto someone else's servers. I don't have a fundamental problem with that (and do it in plenty of other situations) but Syncthing and BTSync give me the option to avoid that. It also means zero cost regardless of capacity.
I can thoroughly recommend SyncThing. I've been using it for a few months now and it's wonderful.
Apparently it's called Pulse now. It has clients for everything you need (linux, windows, android).
Steve
Thanks for that, Steve. I like the look of Pulse.
I had a look at their site (thanks for the link) but there are some glaring omissions. I can't see how they are funding it (or going to fund it despite their crown-funding campaign coming up), and I can't see any mention of data limits, costs etc. As the man himself said, there's no such thing as free.
Surely, as they're not providing any computing power or resources, it can be 'free' in the same way as most Open Source software is.
On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 14:05:57 +0100 Chris Green cl@isbd.net allegedly wrote:
Surely, as they're not providing any computing power or resources, it can be 'free' in the same way as most Open Source software is.
"TANSTAAFL"
If you do not pay for a service, you are not the customer, you are the product. Google, Facebook and others base their entire (hugely profitable) businesses on that fact.
I cannot understand how anyone would willingly synchronise any personal data of any kind with a "free" cloud service.
Mick
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Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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On 20 October 2014 13:24, Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com wrote:
I had a look at their site (thanks for the link) but there are some glaring omissions. I can't see how they are funding it (or going to fund it despite their crown-funding campaign coming up), and I can't see any mention of data limits, costs etc. As the man himself said, there's no such thing as free.
I know this has already been covered, but there's an interesting blog here about the change from syncthing to Pulse: https://pulse-forum.ind.ie/t/introducing-pulse-and-ind-ie/1074
Summary: syncthing (the pre-existing FOSS project which provides P2P sync on your own kit) is being used by ind.ie (and rebranded by them as Pulse), and they are providing development resources. The stated motive behind ind.ie is "independent technology, as in independent from being spied on by various entities", ie a goal that many here will sympathise with.
[Still can't get it to work properly though, but that's probably just me.]
On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 09:36:02PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I know this has already been covered, but there's an interesting blog here about the change from syncthing to Pulse: https://pulse-forum.ind.ie/t/introducing-pulse-and-ind-ie/1074
Summary: syncthing (the pre-existing FOSS project which provides P2P sync on your own kit) is being used by ind.ie (and rebranded by them as Pulse), and they are providing development resources. The stated motive behind ind.ie is "independent technology, as in independent from being spied on by various entities", ie a goal that many here will sympathise with.
[Still can't get it to work properly though, but that's probably just me.]
I've been looking into syncthing a bit too as I would quite like to synchronise (as opposed to back up) a few things between some of my systems. However it does seem a bit naive, at least in the way it tells you about itself:-
There's no mention at all of how frequently things are synchronised, at least not in any of the top level stuff I glanced through. I guess the information must be in there somewhere but it's a bit fundamental, if it synchronises within seconds it's a different tool from one that synchronises hourly or daily.
The way it works is sort of backwards, I don't want to have to put things into a directory that gets synchronised. I want to be able to tell the tool to synchronise existing dirctories. Yes, I could maybe use symbolic links but that then introduces all sorts of inter-system problems.
On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 08:51:06AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
The way it works is sort of backwards, I don't want to have to put things into a directory that gets synchronised. I want to be able to tell the tool to synchronise existing dirctories. Yes, I could maybe use symbolic links but that then introduces all sorts of inter-system problems.
Having looked some more at the documentation I'm not even sure if I've got this right! :-)
... one more query about it, how does it deal with systems that are only connected intermittently? E.g. if syncthing is started at system boot time will it complain and give up if it can't see the other systems it wants to synchronise with?
On 20 October 2014 12:36, Steve Engledow steve@offend.me.uk wrote:
I can thoroughly recommend SyncThing. I've been using it for a few months now and it's wonderful.
Apparently it's called Pulse now. It has clients for everything you need (linux, windows, android).
SyncThing is the one I want to use, but so far I've not had much joy setting it up.
Getting two PCs in the office synced was OK (not as easy at btsync but that's partly because the scurity is better). However I have been completely unable to get my phone to sync with it via the Android app when connected via 4G. It's possible that I'd have the same problem with anything outside the office connecting in (I haven't tried it yet) but I think it's the phone specifically. uPNP is enabled, and the btsync Android app worked first time.
I really want to make syncthing work though, because it is FOSS.
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Chris Green -
Ewan Slater -
Laurie Brown -
Mark Rogers -
mick -
Steve Engledow