Title is TLDR. More info about what I’m trying to do below.

My daily driver computer is Laptop with an SSD. No possibility to expand.

So for storage of lots n lots of files, I have an old, low resource Desktop with a bunch of HDDs plugged in (mostly via USB).

I can access Desktop files via SSH/SFTP on the LAN. But it can be quite slow.

And sometimes (not too often; this isn’t a main requirement) I take Laptop to use elsewhere. I do not plan to make Desktop available outside the network so I need to have a copy of required files on Laptop.

Therefor, sometimes I like to move the remote files from Desktop to Laptop to work on them. To make a sort of local cache. This could be individual files or directory trees.

But then I have a mess of duplication. Sometimes I forget to put the files back.

Seems like Laptop could be a lot more clever than I am and help with this. Like could it always fetch a remote file which is being edited and save it locally?

Is there any way to have Laptop fetch files, information about file trees, etc, located on Desktop when needed and smartly put them back after editing?

Or even keep some stuff around. Like lists of files, attributes, thumbnails etc. Even browsing the directory tree on Desktop can be slow sometimes.

I am not sure what this would be called.

Ideas and tools I am already comfortable with:

  • rsync is the most obvious foundation to work from but I am not sure exactly what would be the best configuration and how to manage it.

  • luckybackup is my favorite rsync GUI front end; it lets you save profiles, jobs etc which is sweet

  • freeFileSync is another GUI front end I’ve used but I am preferring lucky/rsync these days

  • I don’t think git is a viable solution here because there are already git directories included, there are many non-text files, and some of the directory trees are so large that they would cause git to choke looking at all the files.

  • syncthing might work. I’ve been having issues with it lately but I may have gotten these ironed out.

Something a little more transparent than the above would be cool but I am not sure if that exists?

Any help appreciated even just idea on what to web search for because I am stumped even on that.

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 month ago

    You have two problems.

    Transferring between your laptop and desktop is slow. There’s a bunch of reasons that this could be. My first thought is that the desktops got a slow 100mbps nic or not enough memory. You could also be using something that’s resource intensive and slow like zfs/zpools or whatever. It’s also possible your laptops old g WiFi is the bottleneck or that with everything else running at the same time it doesn’t have the memory to hold 40tb worth of directory tree.

    Plug the laptop into the Ethernet and see if that straightens up your problems.

    You want to work with the contents of desktop while away from its physical location. Use a vpn or overlay network for this. I have a complex system so I use nebula. If you just want to get to one machine, you could get away with just regular old openvpn or wireguard.

    E: I just reread your post and the usb is likely the problem. Even over 2.0 it’s godawful. See if you can migrate some of those disks onto the sata connectors inside your desktop.

    • linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      2·
      1 month ago

      Thanks!

      I elaborated on why I’m using USB HDDs in this comment. I have been a bit stuck knowing how to proceed to avoid these problems. I am willing to get a new desktop at some point but not sure what is needed and don’t have unlimited resources. If I buy a new device, I’ll have to live with it for a long time. I have about 6 or 8 external HDDs in total. Will probably eventually consolidate the smaller ones into a larger drive which would bring it down. Several are 2-4TB, could replace with 1x 12TB. But I will probably keep using the existing ones for backup if at all possible.

      Re the VPN, people keep mentioning this. I am not understanding what it would do though? I mostly need to access my files from within the LAN. Certainly not enough to justify the security risk of a dummy like me running a public service. I’d rather just copy files to an encrypted disk for those occasions and feel safe with my ports closed to outsiders.

      Is there some reason to consider a VPN for inside the LAN?