I use one computer at my student housing and another at my parents' home. I mainly need to keep my personal coding and art projects—including assets and Git repositories—as well as university files such as Obsidian notes, PDFs, and class materials available on both machines. Right now I use a laptop with Syncthing and carry it between locations, but I have to remember to run it whenever I need to synchronize things. Would Google Drive or another cloud-storage service work well for syncing selected folders across both computers, or is there a better automated approach?
5 Answers
You can connect the computers through a private network such as Tailscale and then use SSH, SFTP, rsync, or rclone between them. That gives you more control, but you’ll probably need scheduled jobs with cron or systemd timers to make it automatic. It’s powerful, though less beginner-friendly than a standard cloud-sync application.
Cloud storage is the simplest option for most people. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or MEGA can keep selected folders synchronized across multiple operating systems as long as the clients are installed and running. Check how each service handles offline files, conflicts, storage limits, and large project assets before choosing one. Third-party clients such as Insync can also be useful if the official Linux support is limited.
Whatever synchronization method you choose, maintain separate backups. A 3-2-1 setup is a good target: three copies, on two kinds of storage, with one copy stored elsewhere. Also test restoring files occasionally—having a backup that cannot actually be restored is a nasty surprise.
An always-on device running Syncthing is probably the cleanest solution if you want automatic peer-to-peer synchronization without handing your files to a provider. A small home server, Raspberry Pi, or computer that stays powered on can act as your personal sync point, and both main computers can synchronize with it automatically. Just remember that synchronization is not the same as a backup.
For coding projects, use Git as the source of truth and push repositories to a remote Git server. That handles version history and merging much better than blindly syncing a working directory. Keep large binary art assets separately if necessary, since they can make Git repositories unwieldy.
That makes sense. I’ll make sure the sync setup isn’t my only copy and will test restoring some files regularly.