Which is the best way for file synchronization?

[ouchyoung]

Hello there,

Chinese government is commited itself to closing all kinds of cloud service in its power covered area. I wanna set up a private cloud to use myself now. My requirement is to synchronize files between different computers, and the computers won't be turned on at the same time. Thus, a third-party cloud may be the best choice.

I have installed ArchLinux ARM on my Goflex Home, I listed the ways with file synchronization capability as the follows:

1. Samba.
2. SecureFTP
3. Owncloud

For samba and secureFTP, I have to install a third-party software on the client to enable file synchronization, while this combination doesn't have the capability to monitor the file changes on the server, thus it analyzes the differences between the client and the server periodically. Moreoever, samba transaction on the internet might be dangerous, doesn't it? Thus neither the way is the best one.

On the other hand, the owncloud, which is now running on my Goflex Home, is really slow, though it's functioned with file synchronization. I setup it with lighttpd+php-fpm+mariadb, I tried all ways to reduce the memory usage of the entire system, but it still uses another 120M or so of the swap when owncloud gets in the place. The HDD access is too frequent to yield a fast transfer speed. For samba, the LAN transaction can get an average of 20M+, while for owncloud, it's only 1/10 of that for big files, not even mention the large quantity of small files transaction.

So, is there any better way to setup a safe, usable server with file synchronization enabled on such a power-effeciency system? Thanks a lot!

[summers]

My preferred tool is rsync - as it can sync two file systems, but just copying the differences. Hence its good for nightly back ups etc.

rsync can be set up to tunnel over ssh - so is secure.