Two-way sync with 'sync'

Help and Support
1

I know it's been asked before for copy, but is it ok to set up two-way sync with rclone sync?
I want to sync deletions as well, from either location to either location.

Would there be any problems if I set up a cron job to run two rclone sync commands every few minutes?

2

So you have A and B and you want to sync A->B and then B->A ? That seems ripe for losing things.

3

Yes - don't do that!

One day we will have an rclone bisync command which will do the right thing, but until then the best you can do safely is rclone sync one way or rclone copy two ways (which will cause a problem with not being able to delete files)

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4

Bi directional sync is fundamentally harder than one-way. Mostly because it cannot be stateless otherwise you could never know the difference between deletions or new files!

Until rclone nativly supports something, there are many tools to do this...including one I wrote.

They are all on this wiki page.

I actually wrote two:

  • syncrclone: Written from the ground up to support any two rclone remotes. Lots of options and ability to back up first. Extensivly tested on macOS and linux. Probably won't work on Windows out of the box but it shouldn't be too hard. I currently call it "beta" but it is likely going to be out of beta soon.
  • PyFiSync: Originally written for local-->rsync but I later added local-->rclone. I do not suggest it for rclone anymore since I wrote the other one.

Two-way sync is also fundamentally opinionated with how to handle different situations. That's also why I wrote my own. But please do check out the wiki page for other options. They may serve you better!

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5

Got it, thank you for the warning. Thinking about it further I see where this can go wrong.
In the meantime I'll keep supporting you and look forward to that bisync function :grinning:

This sounds good, I might try it and let you know how it goes.

6

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