Making a backup and syncing folders in different desktops with an external ssd and rsync

General Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

I have a desktop at work and one at home. I want to use an external ssd to make a backup (probably using rsync) of one of this desktops, and then use this backup to update the files and folders in the other desktop. Note that it is not a backup of all files and folders, but only some of them that I use for work.

For example: I do some work at home, use rsync to make a backup in an external ssd and then use this backup and rsync to update my folders and files at my desktop at work. And of course, this should work the other way around.

Also, I want that the deleted files in one desktop to be deleted in the external ssd and in the other desktop.

Do you have any suggestions on how to do this?

2

Something like FreeFileSync works well for that :

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3

For backups, I recommend using BorgBackup because it saves a lot of disk space and can encrypt the backups by default. There is a GUI tool called Vorta for this.

4

Hi @Businux , thank you very much.

I used FreeFileSync for a first syncronizations.

In fact, I made the first copy from my homes desktop to the ssd with rsync as:

rsync -arv --delete --info=progress2 my_home/Documents ssd/Documents

but once I tried to use rsync to update my folder at work’s desktop with

rsync -arv --delete --info=progress2 ssd/Documents work/Documents

rsync wanted to copy everything again, like there was no files at work/Documents. FreeFileSync could manage it and just update the files.

I will use FreeFileSync by now but for me, a command line tool would be better. If you have any hint, I would appreciate.

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5

You could give Unison a try :

To synchronize a local directory with a remote directory over SSH:

unison /local/directory ssh://user@remote_host//remote/directory

Compared to rsync, Unison is fully bi-directional and allows the user to detect and reconcile conflicts when both copies of a file have been changed since the last synchronization.

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