BitTorrent Sync

[ScytheRexx]

Has anyone else been using this program? Honestly when it came to some of my hobbies, the 50GB of free space a lot of cloud services utilized just was not enough, plus the fact that part of me was always a little uncomfortable having personal files off on so many different servers. BitTorrent Sync fixed that issue for me in a huge way.

For those that don't want to read the website, it's basically a program that acts like a cloud, but without the cloud, using BitTorrent peer-to-peer tech. You can set a computer to have certain folders you want shared, then utilize a "secret key" to link it with folders on other computers running the program. Once linked, the folders will stay synced, by updating the information on all clients through peer-to-peer transfer over LAN or internet. There is also a special "Read Only" key, so that you can share information with others but not allow them to alter the sync setup.

Right now I have it setup that around 200GB of important files are now all synced between my home computer, work computer, and personal laptop, with about a 20GB folder also synced with my phone using the Android App.

The great thing, is since you are not bound by an external cloud, there are no space limits. If you want 2TB of data all linked across five 2TB drives, you can go right ahead. Or even just setup your own cloud using an old computer to act as the master sync server, like I plan to do with an old system and a 2TB Passport.

I have to say, it's pretty cool.

 

[Covar]

This sounds interesting. I assume being a bittorrent technology that you have to sync with multiple devices to get good speeds? My worry with the decentralization is the ability to access files on demand. For example I can just log into my SkyOneDrive account from a computer and grab that one document I need.

I should probably look more into this when I get home.

 

[ScytheRexx]

This sounds interesting. I assume being a bittorrent technology that you have to sync with multiple devices to get good speeds? My worry with the decentralization is the ability to access files on demand. For example I can just log into my SkyOneDrive account from a computer and grab that one document I need.

I should probably look more into this when I get home.

The speed seems based more on whether it's transferring over LAN or internet. The speeds over LAN are very quick, speeds over internet can be slower depending on how many files you have transferring. Even so, I usually have couple hundred MB to transfer each day due to file updates that don't seem to take too long. I have not seen any speed increase or decrease based on how many computers I have on the sync when it comes over the net, though I don't really scrutinize it.

If you have a whole lot of files like I did, it's best to at least prep the sync folders by transferring the files to a separate hard drive and loading them on each computer manually, then let the program index them. Then any new files added or files altered will update accordingly, but you won't have to wait days for that 300GB of data to move from the one computer to the others.

One other neat little trick, is that the sync will always pull from the fastest sync option. Remember how I mentioned in my last post about having 20GB of sync files on my phone? The reason for that is when I edit stuff at work, it syncs to my phone. Then when I get home and turn on my home computer, it just pulls it right over my phone over the wifi. Pretty quick and painless.

When it comes to getting files on demand, BitTorrent Sync is not really designed to allow just getting one file, because the design is more about already having those files on the computer due to the sync. If you really want a centralized server that you don't have to worry about keeping online yourself, then a online cloud is still the better option. If you do a lot of transfer of hundreds of GB of data though that you need on multiple computers, you can't really beat BitTorrent Sync.

The only somewhat annoying bug I have hit (and it's more just the completest in me) is sometimes the display will say it's still downloading a couple KB from one of the syncs (like 390KB) but the folder is actually synced, when normally it should say sync complete. It's a bit annoying and the only way to fix it right now is to re-add the folder. Hopefully BitTorrent will add an ability to manually reindex.