I’ve replaced many cloud tools with their native counterparts, but the most difficult but satisfying transitions have been those involving storage services. Of course, I had to do extra work to make sure I didn’t lose data due to a freak accident, but building local storage pipelines not only helped me save money, but also made my productivity tasks invulnerable to the prying eyes of large corporations.
Take it from me Synchronization installation, e.g. I primarily used Dropbox for its file sync features because I wanted to keep my projects on my daily driver computers. But after encountering Syncthing and enjoying its P2P syncing features, I ditched Dropbox and its premium subscriptions altogether.
I don’t have to worry about hitting max device limits on sync
It is also cheaper to use in the long run
In my early days as a moderator, the 3 device limit imposed by Dropbox’s free plan wasn’t that big of a deal, and even the 2GB storage limit didn’t stop me from using the cloud platform for my sync operations. But as the years went by and my coding projects got crazier, it became clear that Dropbox’s free plan wasn’t going to meet my productivity needs.
Sync, on the other hand, is a peer-to-peer sync tool, and all I have to do is install it on my local machines and connect them to each other to start my sync operations. Since it’s decentralized, I can install it on my everyday machines so I can share files between them without relying on a cloud platform. Sync doesn’t cap my devices or limit the size of file transfers, so I don’t have to spend extra dollars each month on subscriptions.
Keeping everything on my local devices without needing a cloud platform as an intermediary also keeps my documents private. I had to lean back then Cryptomator protecting soon-to-be-released source code and confidential project files from Dropbox’s own automated scans and hackers. But since everything is available on my (highly locked down) LAN, I don’t need to encrypt the files I want to sync between local devices.
Sync has excellent P2P file syncing features
File versioning and multi-way syncing are pretty handy for my home lab
Despite its simple UI, Sync includes some advanced tools to make my file sync pipeline more robust. File Versions is one such utility because it keeps old versions of my documents when they are overwritten or deleted by automatic Sync operations. After all, sync tasks spanning multiple systems can sometimes result in unwanted write tasks messing with my painstakingly coded project files, and file versioning solves this problem by allowing me to restore the original files on my remote systems. I stick with the trash versioning strategy for the most part because it makes recovery much easier by moving overwritten files to another folder while preserving their names. However, the staggered file versions method is quite effective when I want to avoid files that are frequently synced taking up too much space.
I have several systems armed with sync and I sometimes add new instances from my LXCs and VMs just to make file sync tasks easier. If I were to manually add new devices to my Sync cluster, it would take a long time. Not to mention that an incomplete installation may result in overwriting older versions of files. Fortunately, the submission feature saves me the time I would have spent pairing each instance by automatically sharing the device list and connection details with my newly configured Sync systems.
Then there’s the directional sync facility, which specifies the nodes to which Sync propagates file changes. You see, the default Sync setup pushes any changes I make to files on any system to my other devices. However, I can change the sync operation to add finer-grained control over files transferred to specific nodes using the Send Only and Receive Only modes. The former rejects incoming write tasks from other nodes and is solely responsible for pushing local changes to the rest of my Sync cluster, making it ideal for my everyday devices with source files.
At the same time, Receive Only mode is better for Synchronization instances that serve as replication mirrors because it limits the propagation of local changes to other machines while accepting all incoming synchronization operations. It gets even better when you arm remote nodes with this tool…
Throw in Tailscale and I can convert off-site Sync instances to (private) cloud storage servers
Unlike synchronization, Dropbox has another utility besides file synchronization operations – this cloud platform can serve as a backup system for key documents. If anything, Syncthing’s documentation purposefully states that it’s a file syncing tool that shouldn’t be used for backups. However, it can facilitate file transfer tasks in installations that require redundant storage resources.
File versioning is a great way to avoid failed sync operations from corrupting the underlying files, and using a remote node with Receive Only mode ensures that local changes don’t leave the system. With a little Tail scale magically, I can turn a Sync instance miles away from my cave into a secure secondary cloud server – one that remains under my control and requires no subscription to protect my files.
