Sharing files between all my computers

[Frozenguy]

I have two laptops and a desktop and there are various reasons why I want to work on one vs another.

How do I keep all files up to date and available? My ideas are:

Cloud service
Server in house

Pros and cons as i see it:

Cloud service:
CONS: data is on someone else's server
PROS: should be the most seamless to push changes to cloud service. I don't want to have to run updates or anything too tedious. I'd like to just save my file like normal and it gets pushed.

Server in house:
CONS: I may be wrong but I feel like there either extra steps to push changes to the server, OR I have to work from the server database which reduces speed. also: physical space, something to manage, set up costs and time.
PROS: data is at my location and stays there and after initial costs, it could be cheaper than cloud.

But ultimately I'm not concerned about the price difference between the two.

[ibanezfoo]

I just use my own server but you can use Onedrive or Google drive for free if you want the files accessible from everywhere. For simple home use and file sharing everyone makes a NAS nowadays and they are relatively inexpensive. Research your favorite flavor.

[WoodTurner]

Rsync would be what you're looking for on Linux. Not sure if it works on windows.

[ibanezfoo]

Sync Thing is supposed to be good according to my guys. I have never used it so I can't say.

https://syncthing.net/

[sigstroker]

I just use my own server but you can use Onedrive or Google drive for free if you want the files accessible from everywhere. For simple home use and file sharing everyone makes a NAS nowadays and they are relatively inexpensive. Research your favorite flavor.

You can make a NAS very fast with a RAID setup.

[MrFancyPants]

What I do is host the "my documents," "downloads," "pictures" and "music" folders on my NAS, and pin quick access shortcuts to those network folders on all my Windows OS devices in the usual place, which gives me quick and easy access to them on all my devices same as the local folders, and since I'm connecting to central files on the NAS, I'm only ever using or updating a single instance of the files. It also makes reinstalling the OS easy as I don't have to back up any data, I just add the quick access shortcuts again and boom, all the same files are there. The NAS has RAID redundancy and I also back up to external disks. I have many other directly connected drives I use for various things, but the network folders works great for the bulk of my normal activity. Of course you can do the same for mapped drives.

If you're running Linux on anything, just install the SMB package and connect to network shares hosting your files.

[high_revs]

You can make a NAS very fast with a RAID setup.

this is what i do since my need is all inside my home network. i'm still rocking the readynas from like 12 yrs ago. not that much i need to put across different machines.

if needing to stream, can be done too. my samsung tv can see the nas and stream things if needed. for my poor eyes, more than sufficient.

if outside network access is needed, still possible if OP sets up some kind of ddns and vpn. this is why i stuck with orbi - gave me ddns free and has built in vpn. it's not often i'll need to go to my nas so i didn't configure it as such. but i did do sftp on my old router - an asus rt56u or something like that and usb connected to a 2.5" external drive.

[WoodTurner]

Sync Thing is supposed to be good according to my guys. I have never used it so I can't say.

https://syncthing.net/

I use syncthing all the time for automatic file transfer but haven't used to as a way of updating files, so can't comment on that use case. I use it to automatically copy files to a NAS. The web UI makes it very easy to setup and use.

[ibanezfoo]

You can make a NAS very fast with a RAID setup.

Or just plug in a Synology or something similar.

[Woodworker2]

Or, you could get a USB hard drive, and keep your files there. Two drives might be better, one for daily use and a back-up in your safe or off site. Costco has them.

[ibanezfoo]

Or, you could get a USB hard drive, and keep your files there. Two drives might be better, one for daily use and a back-up in your safe or off site. Costco has them.

The request was for real time file sharing between multiple computers. In the corporate world we just use servers and work from there. At home we do the same. But, there are cloud services that provide this same feature at little to no cost but at some potential impact to speed. The cloud services typically make offline copies locally so they are fast but you are still at the mercy of their sync times.

[larkja]

We started using Google drive a couple years ago for file sharing. I have an account with dropbox that was set up years ago and has all our legacy documents. Still pay a few $$$ every month to maintain the storage.