Use Phone To Mirror Two External Hds

[Ethan]

I've long been looking for a way to backup my data of around 1.5tb of video and audio.

I'd like to use btsync for this and was thinking to mirror the data between two external USB drives, one attached to my laptop and the other to my desktop, since they both feed my collection depending where I work. Since my phone is the only device that will share uptime with both of them, I was hoping if maybe there exists a possible btsync setup that will make my phone update changes between the two USB drives.

Obviously my phone can't store 1.5tb, so it should only transfer changes and flush this data when done.

Is this possible? Is there a better way to do it?

Thanks in advance.

[GreatMarko]

Is this possible?

In short, no - for two device to Sync data between them, they must both be online.

If you wish to have a "middle man" between two devices, you'll need a 3rd device that's "always on" - such as a supported NAS drive, Home Server, or one of the various 3rd party cloud solutions that exist for Sync.

To use your phone as the "always on" "middle man" would require 1.5tb of space on your device.

I personally can't see the use of a phone as an always-online "server" for Sync being 1) all that efficient, 2) having enough appeal to Sync users (given limited space on mobile devices, and data charges, etc) to warrant development of your specific-use case.

That said, the purpose of this forum is indeed to suggest and discuss ideas and potential improvements to Sync.... so let's see if other users like your idea...

[JimmyTheSaint]

My S4 is always on, but then I "only" sync 16GB. I also have an unlimited data plan. Even with one of the new 128GB micro-SD's, phones can't go above 200GB; 1.5TB is surely years away, but I would think it's strictly a storage space issue rather than any other limitation of the Android app. On the other hand, my Note 2 has sync problems that the devs suspected was related to putting sync folders on the external SD, a problem that my S4 doesn't have. So I reduced the Note 2 to one 300MB sync folder on the internal SD, and there hasn't been a problem since. I gave up on the underlying problem because it wasn't worth the time on that little-used device. But the lesson is that phones' sync performance can be more touchy (e.g. when Google or Samsung spring surprises on us, like the exernal SD access issue) and also harder for the user to troubleshoot than Linux, Windows, or OSX. I would not yet be comfortable with relying on a phone as my 24/7 middle man, and all but one of my devices syncs 24/7.

[Ethan]

Yea I've had similar hiccups with the external SD.

About the 1.5tb; I meant for my phone to only update changes. Say if I create a new video of 1gb, I'd need it be synced on both external USB drives, making them 1.5tb + 1gb, while the phone does not need to save anything long-term. It can get rid of the 1gb video once it's synced either of the mirrored drives.

I guess this isn't possible though.

[JimmyTheSaint]

So I guess what you and GreatMarko are discussing above is the ability to have a device act as nothing but a buffer or relay of sync changes without having to actually store the full content on that device. And the only reason would be because the phone is on 24/7, so you want to give the other devices an opportunity to sleep without losing anything? I don't see much utility in that, either, because it's cheap and easy to set up some kind of little workhorse server or NAS instead of using a phone. I have the NAS (and the second NAS as backup) so that I never have to think about if my laptops and phones are online or not. As it turns out, though, everything but one of my laptops is 24/7, but that's just me.