Syncing Home Dir Between Two Machines

ScottW

ScottW

Founder
Staff member
While I am aware of the 101 ways to sync home folders between two machines, I am wondering what folks experience is if they have done this through one implementation or another.

The reason I am writing is my father-in-law would wants to have two Macs, one at home, one at work. If he works on iPhoto at work, he wants access to those changes at home. Entourage, he wants to have his various projects, contacts and all that to be in sync. Mail is stored on the server IMAP, so mail is not an issue.

The implementation would need to be hassle free as possible.

One idea I have had was to use a external portable drive to sync the home dir to and then take that back and forth. But even going through the sync process on both sides would be more hassle than he'd want. I have thought about putting the home directory on the portable drive and he can just take that back and forth, but even that is not perfect solution as it would require logging out on each machine. Before pulling the external drive out.

Obviously, a laptop would be good, he has a 17" PB... but doesn't want to carry it or even a small PB back and forth. (crazy huh?)

The most ideal solution would be to sync over the internet Entourage (or have a shared primary data location for both) and iPhoto libraries... then just add other applications info that he wants synced. It would still require him to fire off a rsync script or run one of many different sync applications to mirror up the data. But that might just be best.

Thoughts, experiences?
 
Forget syncing. Get a high capacity external firewire drive then boot each machine from the firewire drive and run from it. At the end of the day, dismount the drive power it down, take it home and plug it into the home machine and boot that machine from the same drive. In the morning reverse the procedure. That is about as simple and trouble free as you can get.
 
Good idea. That is more trouble than what he'd prefer to do. :) If carrying a Powerbook back and forther is against the ease policy, then carrying around a larger regular size HD is going to be an issue as well. :)
 
The perfect solution is available, but is very expensive and typically requires a Cisco certified engineer to administer. I say this because syncing data over a standard internet connection poses a massive security threat. The only way I could possibly endorse your father's desire is thru use of a secure VPN tunnel and backup software like Carbon Copy Cloner.

Although i don't think CCC backs up to network drives, so there's that problem.

In short, a laptop is the best solution. Shy of that, the Good Prof's suggestion is a close second. Sorry that technology has yet to progress that far. Hope fully some enterprising genius will take your father's suggestion and run with it... heck, I'm sure he's not the only one who'd like that convenience.
 
A Cisco Certified Engineer? To run SSH over the internet? Obviously, this is the only real solution to mirror up data running Rsync or apps like CCC. While this is great for specific data, full home-folder syncs could be very time consuming over slow broadband upload speeds or T1s.

After talking with my father-in-law today, I think he is just going ot get a MacBook Pro with the ability to access his data at work on demand. Tough decisions. ;)
 
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