Automatically sync two hard drives over the internet

[Ervin Farkas]

I need to set up a way of syncing the content of an external hard drive at my home office with another external hard drive at another location miles away, in order to allow two editors to have access to the same media files.

Both sides need to have read/write privileges. Both sides use Windows 7 PCs. Would be nice if the actual syncing could be timed so it happens automatically during the night to reduce network congestion, with the option of manual sync anytime as needed. The amount of data to be synced would be a few GB per day.

Is there an easy/inexpensive way of doing this automatically?

[Jim Michael]

The first requirement would be sufficient bandwidth on both ends. Take your worst case scenario and determine the amount of data to be transferred, then divide into your bandwidth allocation. Then you would probably need to set up a VPN connection between the two facilities. I'm not sure what you might use for the sync utility but if you would like a referral to a good consulting group in ATL shoot me a PM and I'll give you the contact info. They set up something similar for one of my clients - they were short on bandwidth and set up a microwave link, then configured software to keep servers failover ready. Those were Linux servers and they used rsync or something similar. Looks like there is an rsync port for Windows, so that might be an option.

[Tim Lewis]

You can use the program SyncBackPro. There are free and paid versions with different features, that include FTP.

[Vince Pachiano]

Have you looked at something like like dropbox or google drive?
Although one issue with external drives is that if they ever go offline (i.e. you unplug them),
dropbox is gonna view this as a file deletion, and its gonna want to delete the cloud copy.
I suppose you can enable/disable dropbox at-will, and then only when your external hdd is connected

https://www.dropbox.com/business/use...-collaboration

[Ervin Farkas]

There are some better ways then syncing through the cloud.

I am researching now and will post my findings at a later time.

[Ervin Farkas]

Yes, there is a better way! Instead of uploading drive one to the cloud, then downloading from the cloud to drive two, you can go directly drive one to drive two in torrent style - breaking up the files in small pieces and re-assembling them at destination.

All this with 256-bit encryption. See BitTorrent Sync - Get Started on Desktop - it's free, and it's available for virtually any and all platforms in use today, from PC to iOs and Android to NAS.

It works both on a local network, and on the internet. A small program needs to be installed on both (or all) computers, then select the folder to be synced, the program creates a password/key that needs to be shared with the other side - and that's it. Whatever you put in the source folder, gets copied in the destination folder, and vice versa, works both ways. No file size or file number limits.

To be clear, this is not for real-time editing over the network or over the internet - it is just a way of syncing.

If still in doubt over security, just Google the reviews of BitTorrent Sync.