Sync 2 Machines Where Data Is Initially Already On Both

[leftquark]

My goal is to sync my photo collection between Computer 1 and Computer 2. My photos reside on an external drive connected to Computer 1. I've duplicated this onto a second external hard-drive and connected it to computer 2. Since the files are now identical on both computers (HD connected to each) I'd like to make sure any changes to the HD on Computer 1 get sync'd to the HD on Computer 2.

 

On computer 1 I've set my Default Folder Location to be the folder on the HD containing all the photos. I've then also added that Folder to BT Sync. On Computer 2 I've set the "Default Folder Location" to be the HD connected to it. Instead of recognizing the files already exist, it created a new folder (called "Pictures (1)" instead of "Pictures") and is now sync'ing all of the files even though the files already exist on the drive.

 

I'm wondering if there's any way to take advantage of the fact that the photos are already on both drives and not have to use BT Sync to get the initial transfer over.

 

Both machines (at the moment) are connected via WiFi to the same network and I've limited it to LAN connections but it's only transferring at ~160kb/sec. At this rate it's going to take weeks to get the files onto the drive, when they're already there thanks to the speeds of USB3/SATA.

 

Is this possible?

Edited May 9, 2015 by leftquark

[Dalamar]

I am doing exactly this to have my movie collection synced between 2 NAS without (big) issues.

 

First i got the same file structure in both NAS, in your case, in both machines you need to have the same files and same directory structure (relative, no need to absolute). As i want to be able to define different paths for different folders/directories i have synced, i am NOT linking both devices together, but sharing the folder

 

First you need to add all your files to btsync and make sure they are all properly indexed, in my case as we are talking about Terabytes it took several days (check the size and the progress columns)

 

Once you have that, you share the folder between the machines, and you add the shared folder to the parent folder of the destination machine, where you already have the files, just like if you were going to overwrite it.

 

You will be asked to verify your destination folder as there is information already there,  and then the process will start of indexing the files you already have in your destination machine and compared to those in the source machine. It will take a while, so check progress and size on source and destination.

 

Once you have same size on both sides, it is done. You can also check this is happening by monitoring cpu usage (high) and network usage (very low) as you are not transferring files between machines, just calculating hashes and comparing them.

 

Do not make any modification to source or destination folders until initial sync finishes. in theory nothing should happen, but in my tests i had issues and had to restart the initial sync.

 

Hope it helps.