![]() In other words, “file restoration” is built in to the NAS’s syncing software-an “undo” button for inadvertent deletion. If you ever have to restore your files, the NAS makes it easy without the trouble or worry of having to interact with fiddly backup software. With a NAS, when you sync your devices, they don’t all have to be on, because they sync via the NAS, which is always on (but don’t worry, it doesn’t use much energy). It’s not a traditional desktop computer it’s a server. It’s an actual box that lives in your home or office, but it’s also on the Internet, so you can access it from anywhere. NAS means “network-attached storage,” and it means basically your very own personal cloud server. Well…having decided I’m going back to the drawing board on a cloud/device syncing solution, I recalled that NAS devices solve this general problem very neatly. Boo! Hiss! I’d rather handle this myself and avoid the privacy/security risks, if I can. There are two ways in which software can do this for you: (1) you use a cloud you pay for, like Dropbox (e.g., Enpass supports Dropbox syncing), or (2) you use the software vendor’s cloud/server, as email syncs via IMAP with your mail host, which you must trust, or as Chrome and Firefox do with bookmarks, and as Apple does with your contacts and calendar. The problem, essentially, is that you need to let your software (browser, password manager, calendar, or text editor) handle its own syncing via the cloud. This is one of those technical issues that sounds very abstruse, but which poses very real, concrete problems when the rubber meets the road. Sure, you can sync a data file, but insofar as this same data file (i.e., identical copies of it) must interact correctly with software on each of your systems, then unless the software is specially and carefully written to work with an independent datafile that works the same on all your systems (I think Sublime Text is OK here), you should let your local copy of the software update its own copy of its datafile. However, I definitively decided that I had made the wrong choice when I discovered that Sync has no easy way (that I can find) to support the syncing of contacts, passwords, calendars, bookmarks, and text editor settings. These problems are annoying, but not horrible. I’ve had to use Dropbox’s “restore” feature before I figure it’s only so long before I have to restore something from my backup, and what happens if my backup program’s restore feature is screwed up or very hard to use? Oy. Also annoying is having to rely heavily on traditional backup, because if God forbid you should delete something inadvertently, your deletion will propagate among your devices (if they’re all on at the same time-entirely possible). Foremost among these is the fact that Sync isn’t a “set it and forget it” technology, i.e., you have to think about and maintain the state of your syncitude, since your devices have to be on at the same time (and Sync has to be working on both/all of them). ![]() Why Resilio Sync isn’t working out for meĪs I explained in an update, the solution I went with-Resilio Sync plus backup to an external drive-had some drawbacks that were unexpectedly annoying. I must thank a gentleman who gave excellent feedback and corrections on my VPN post from a month ago. People more expert about this stuff than I am: please review my various claims here for accuracy. So, if you have the patience and credulity, you may listen in while an amateur deliberates about the choices… In my ongoing effort to lock down my cyber-life, I jettisoned Dropbox three weeks ago, and I’m quite happy I did.īut I’m not done with the reconfiguration.
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