The Types of Things People are Using SYNC for

[alans17]

I have not yet implemented this, but I like the idea so much that I think I will... Lightroom syncing across multiple devices!

 

Lightroom doesn't care if you put your images on a network share, but your catalog must be run from your local machine. I think Sync can be used for a two-pronged approach to keep everything in sync and backed up.

 

1.) First, move the images onto a local NAS with Sync installed (such as unRAID or using VM's).

2.) Move the catalog to a shared portion of your local hard drive (such as "/Users/Shared" on OS X).

3.) Rebuild the catalot to point to your networked images.

 

At this point, you've successfully disjointed your catalog from your images. Now to start syncing.

 

1.) Create shares for the catalog on your local machine and sync it out to any other machines you have. Since it's already in the "/Users/Shared" folder, it's already accessible from every account on the local machine except now it's accessible from every account on every machine.

2.) Sync the catalog over to the NAS. Now it's located on every client machine and the NAS. In my environment, that's 4-way redundancy. Since the Lightroom catalog is platform agnostic, this will work in mixed Mac/Windows environments!

 

That's all well and good, but this can be taken to the next level. Even though the catalog is now in multiple places, the images on the NAS still provide a single point of failure. However, we can back up the entire image folder using Sync to a secondary remote NAS or VPS.

[alans17]

I'm also going to attempt to use it for roaming profiles on my Macs without having to use OS X Server.

[sethfoxen]

I use SYNC on my laptop, and a few personal rasberry pi servers. One server is for backups, so it just hosts all the shares that I have off-site in case I need to grab some files if my main pi server goes down, which is used for cloud storage and torrents.
 
I also use SYNC on my android phone, along with my laptop and servers, to keep my emulator ROMs and save files synced between my laptop, phone, and OUYA console. I can start a game on my phone on the go, and pick up right where I left off at home on my OUYA, and vice-versa. I've been using this system for a few months, and the instantanous sync of game files and such is absolutely perfect, and there's hardly any lag time to sync on my own network. If I'm off my network, there's really no need for the sync to be instant, since I'm away from my OUYA console anyway, but having the save files backup, and being able to restore save files that I've botched for any reason is a life saver.
 
Using my own personal cloud storage to keep everything across my laptop, and netbook synced is great for writing reports for college. I take my netbook to class while my laptop stays at home, and I can take notes, save powerpoints, and start papers on it, then finish them when I get hom on my laptop, or desktop. I can keep my music collection synced between my latop and netbook, allowing me to listen to some music while I'm studying in the lobby at school, or writing reports in the cafeteria.
 
All in all, I love this software, and I'm very glad to have found it, and for it's development.

[bilditup1]

I signed up for this forum specifically to thank the devs for this excellent piece of software. It's just great! I was lamenting, earlier this year, the lack of such an easy syncing sans cloud product, and thinking that a golden opportunity was being missed. My conception of it would have used ftp. Good thing I never began work on that!

Anyway - thanks to Newegg's 4TB for $150 deals, I finally decided to take the plunge and build a media server of solid capacity. Everything important, irreplaceable, or that takes a long time to collect is now synced with our RAID 10 summer machine without any hiccups or stupidity. It's glorious! The only other product I'm aware of that can possibly do this is AeroFS, and this just totally destroys it in terms of simplicity, ease of setup, and effectiveness. Aside from this, I also use it to sync my full music folder of ~500GB to my laptop. While I am currently using FolderSync coupled with Dropbox to sync my Calibre library to my Nook, it is an unnecessary indulgence (though I'm not sure if Android 2.2 is supported by the BTSync client for Android.)

I'm reading the 'Sync Hacks' forum with great interest, and hope I will be able to contribute in the future...

[eberwein]

Using it for a simple and free way to back up my files. I have ~2tb of files, which I keep on mirrored disks in my home office. I made a third copy (just using drag and drop) and then took it and an old netbook and placed them in a remote location, and then synced it to one of the home disks.

 

Now I have all of my files remotely backed up, so a local flood, fire, theft will not result in losing my files.

[joe@shopsbee]

We're a new shopping site service / API, BTSync is awesome and we've set it up to allow clients to remotely sync files they're developing. Our site is http://www.shopsbee.com

[affert]

Providing an off-site copy of family photos, videos, etc. 

 

My dad and I got matching 2TB HDDs that sync to each other so that our family can have a backup of our important files.  (He lives in a different state)

[VirtualCorvid]

It has replaced my flash drive, I can keep my school notes and design documents completely synchronized from computer to computer to device without having to do anything.

 

Also I moved 200GB of video files from one computer to another across my network at 10Gbps in a few hours.  Actually moving the hard drive and copying the files over would have taken less time, but now when ever I add a new video to my collection it moves over to my home server without any fuss.

 

Plus backing up all the pictures I take with my phone straight to my desktop is amazing, not that it wasn't possible before, but I don't have to leak the metadata from the pictures every time I want one backed up anymore by using a third party storage provider.

[fireismyflag]

I installed it on my Nintendo Wii, on which I had already installed a Gentoo-based Linux distro, and I have replaced Skydrive and Dropbox with BTSync.

 

The trans-NATting was the killer feature for my setup.

 

Looking forward to implementing BTSync at my company, we will need to limit folder creation so that only IT can create new ones and share the keys between computers.

[Marcus-Jay]

I am setting this up on my home server (W2003 Server) and on a WD My Book Live that will be running at a remote location (Parents house) so that I can back up our combined image collection.  I had initially set up a folder sync via winscp by changing ip addresses at the remote location made that very difficult.

 

Currently trying to index the 70,000+ files in the folders at the moment. But it is taking quite some time, especially as Bittorrent keeps exiting/crashing or something on the server and requires restarting

Hopefully once it is all indexed it will just sit and purr away.... we willl see.

Once this is done I will look into adding nodes to the system for more robustness.

Thanks for a quite interesting piece of software.

[theironknuckle]

Holy crap. This seems to have started something: There are distributed chat clients, social networks, and email systems which are based on bitttorrent sync popping up all over the place! I sincerely wish that ALL of these projects find success and widespread adoption.

 

The whole situation has a very nerdy vibe right now, which is unfortunate because these innovations could easily lead to an internet revolution if it was made more accesible to the average joe. This would bring relevance back to the desktop PC which is apparently dying in the wake of smartphones if techblogs and nerd magazines are to be believed. Which is basically because the big boys of the internet are doing all the heavy lifting in the background on their extensive server farms, which means all you really need is a smart phone.

 

Instead of having server farms running the show, it would be up to each individual to host their webapps, as well as store and provide their data. The line between web applications and native applications could become very fine indeed. At the point where everyone hosts their own email, facebook account+data and IM infrastructure, privacy, PRISM and NSA scandals shouln't be an issue at all.

 

If the government wants to raid someone's private data, they'll have to do it the traditional way: by obtaining a warrant, storming the fort and seizing the hardware on which it's stored. The difference this time is that the data is stored where it should be: in the hands of the user it pertains to.

 

There's no legislative reform necessary, all we've got to do is get people to adopt the technology.

 

Thank you all so much for what you're doing here. Someone mentioned a few pages back that they want to send some beer tokens your way. If someone wants to start up a vodka and whisky fund for you all I'll happily donate.

[gunverth]

This week we tried a setup for DeployStudio image distribution at a nationwide college. "No Bittorrent whatsoever through the firewall", said the IT policy. That's a shame. No problems running it strictly on the inside though.

Running rsync to our master server (on the public Internet) from a server on the inside, copies the images (280GB ) and then redistributes it with RO shares to 29 other DeployStudio servers. 7TB sata copied within 12 hours. All servers uses the same list of private "specific hosts" in the setup. No other folder options checked. No tracker, no DHT, no LAN (it's a B-net intranet).

Works like a charm.

[smeerbartje]

Cool! Very cool to read all your implementations!

[Spacemarine]

"No Bittorrent whatsoever through the firewall", said the IT policy.

 

Did you try it and it didn't work? Or is this just the policy of what is allowed and what is not allowed?

 

Because Bittorrent Sync is NOT Bittorrent in the conventional way. If the developers gave it another name, like "Ultra-fast Everywhere-Sync", your IT department wouldn't even know it shares some technical details with Bittorrent and therefore wouldn't regard it as Bittorrent "whatsoever".

[vladr]

I see people using BitTorrent Sync at work or by syncing work-related documents. Others are directly using it at work with their clients. Even the video that is available on the home page of BitTorrent Sync's website shows a guys that is using it for work. All this despite the facts that the only license agreement available on bittorent.com (http://www.bittorrent.com/legal/eula) specifically denies commercial use:

 

 

By accepting this agreement or by installing BitTorrent or uTorrent or other software offered by or on behalf of BitTorrent, Inc. (the "Software") or by clicking "Install", you agree to the following terms, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this agreement. [...] BitTorrent, Inc. grants you a royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Software, solely for your personal, non-commercial purposes.

 

Funny thing, despite the fact that the product's home page (http://www.bittorrent.com/sync) has a sub-title that reads "Free for all.", I see now a tiny pop-in survey in the corner of the window, that asks visitors about how much would they be willing to pay for "BitTorrent Sync" if they use it commercially (aka for work-related tasks).

Now, it's obvious that BitTorrent Inc. doesn't want to miss the opportunity of monetizing their "dropbox killer" app, which I'm not criticizing in any way.

 

This post has two purposes. One is to give the users a heads-up on the current legal limitations of the software, so they don't invest too much time in setting up their workflow around something that they believe will have no additional costs. And second, to have BitTorrent Inc. attach a clear end user license agreement to this software and decide on how they are going to handle its commercial usage. It wouldn't be nice to be misleading.

[gunverth]

Did you try it and it didn't work? Or is this just the policy of what is allowed and what is not allowed?

Because Bittorrent Sync is NOT Bittorrent in the conventional way. If the developers gave it another name, like "Ultra-fast Everywhere-Sync", your IT department wouldn't even know it shares some technical details with Bittorrent and therefore wouldn't regard it as Bittorrent "whatsoever".

It actually didn't work and I see the point in the policy: To prevent students from using it. They don't care about policies.

[Spacemarine]

It actually didn't work and I see the point in the policy: To prevent students from using it. They don't care about policies.

 

I'm not sure I see your point. Why shouldn't students use it? Is dropbox also blocked? Is dropbox something students shouldn't use either?

 

It works perfectly at our university btw. Syncing between any computers inside and outside of the campus at maximum bandwidth capacity.

[casacota]

First, thank the developers for this awesome solution. Great idea and software, crossplatform and independent.

 

I'm using it for many purposes. Having a server at home, the server and BTSync benefit from each other.

 

BTsync is installed on the server, but also all other devices: smartphones, tablets, laptops and the business related computers with different share options, building a good backup solution for all these.

 

But backup is not the primary reason for BTSync. Since the mobile devices are connected, updating the image database is automatic, scripts move the pictures around keeping the memory on the phones free and storing all on the server and big machines.

 

The server is mainly a weather server (www.meteo.casacota.cat) connected to several weather stations around the Pyrennees building the central database for all them. With BTSync I can share the data not only via website but also bigger databases with different people interested, avoiding manual mails with attachments sending.

 

On the other site I'm teaching in a school and dealing with many and big audiovisual files, pro semester about 20 GB, to be shared with more than 100 students. BTSync is used to share all these files, with support from an external BTSync server, https://incloudibly.com/en/syncservers to speedup sharing since the main server has a poor connection being located in the mountains with only a radio link.

 

This makes 18 different Sync folders with about 500000 individual files and around 500 GB data. Earlier I tried other solutions like dropbox, spideroak, copy and others, but all where very slow and otherwise limiting: bandwidth, CPU and resources consumption, limited in the configuration (read-only folders are a must), BTSync addresses this all and does'nt slow down any machine, specially with unencripted TCP for NAT connections.

 

In short, BTSyng is changing the life... thanks!

[ade_m]

I'm now using on a LAN between two PCs.  It syncs my music a photos automatically, as well as documents.

Then, my second PC uses Crashplan to sync up to the web.  I use them, because they have Unlimited versioning of files.

 

I also use Mediamonkey to manage the MP3s on both PCs. With this setup I can modify the collection on either PC, and have it sync to the other within a few seconds. Crashplan then also backups up those changes to the cloud meaning I can 'undo' any change.

 

So far - pretty good, although it gets lost on some files changes leaving temporary files behind, so I periodically have to manually check for those.

[knirsch]

Great tool!  We are doing humanitarian work worldwide.  We are now using BTsynch to maintain the files of the 3-4 laptops in the remote location.  As a result, no data is anywhere in a Cloud.  If worst comes to worst, we can grab any laptop and have all data with us.  In addition, we are also synching several computers at the home base.  This works so-so, but is considerable less reliable.

 

Could this be because home base is in a different time zone?  Can anyone explain (better) the "synch_max_time_diff" settings to me?  We use the default of 600s.  What happens if one of the laptops is off by more than this amount?

 

 

[lolcat]

Great tool!  We are doing humanitarian work worldwide.  We are now using BTsynch to maintain the files of the 3-4 laptops in the remote location.  As a result, no data is anywhere in a Cloud.  If worst comes to worst, we can grab any laptop and have all data with us.  In addition, we are also synching several computers at the home base.  This works so-so, but is considerable less reliable.

 

Could this be because home base is in a different time zone?  Can anyone explain (better) the "synch_max_time_diff" settings to me?  We use the default of 600s.  What happens if one of the laptops is off by more than this amount?

 

 

Would you like to elaborate how it is less reliable?

Apart from older files overwriting newer files and the client refusing to sync there should be no problems. I am not sure which of those scenarios would be worst for your setup. If you increase the value, you risk someone updating a file, and then having it overwritten by an older version because their timestamps would be different. I am not sure if BTSync converts the time zone to one of the standard time zones or if it just uses the time as you see it. If it does it in a sane way, it would convert all the times to CET or UTC, and then upload it. Preferably it would also use some other source than the system clock as they can be rather unreliable.

 

I would not increase the setting if you are editing the same files, as that could cause the newest one to be overwritten by the oldest one (it would still store the old version somewhere, but it would be an annoyance). I would probably keep it as it is, and rather use two shares. One that is maintained by one person, where everyone gets read-only access, and one where anyone can dump updated documents.

[hpbaxter]

like other, in testing mode

 

my Nas is my btsync server, used to sync my phone, pc & laptop from work.

 

so nothing special

nex step, some kind of backup system

[Spacemarine]

 

my Nas is my btsync server, used to sync my phone, pc & laptop from work.

 

 

Which NAS do you have and what speed do you get when you are on the same LAN?

[ki4jgt]

I'm using it to keep copies of paperwork (for my job) on my tablet for backups in case my laptop ever decides to crash. Syncing takes longer than I'd like (I save often 1 minute intervals) and I've had the experience of documents not being properly synced being overwritten by older versions. That was a little frustrating (only happened once and I'm assuming user error of some sort). Other than these two things, I love it. No reliance on third-parties to keep data. Drag-n-drop files directly into tablet. No need to connect a USB cord or setup an FTP/SMB server on tablet or computer.

[FrederickTF]

i use mine to start my torrents from school or work

 

i have an external hdd on my server at home that is 2 way shared on bittorrent sync with my ipad. i also did set up my transmission (torrent client) to start any .torrent file added to that hdd. so i just add the .torrent at the right place with my iPad and transmission starts the download. remove the .torrent and put the file at that place.

 

this makes it way easier than any other solution and also allow me to have access to that hdd from my iPad.