For quite a while I have been using ownCloud to syncronize and backup files. But enough about ownCloud, I think I have found something much better for my needs: Syncthing.
It is still early, but a few things I like:
- Simple command line server with webGUI, makes it easy to run on headless machines, and the same GUI for all platforms
- Light on resources (it actually works well on my QNAP-TS109: ARMv5@500MHz and 128MB RAM)
- It had Debian packages, even for armel
- It is easy to use – just start using it and you will get it immediately
- No need for a webserver or database
- There is no single centralized server that can crash, requires special updates, or that requires a recovery plan.
I have now synced ~13000 files, ~75GB, to my QNAP. It uploads/downloads at about 250-500kb/s (kilobytes), and it uses about 60-70MB of RAM in doing so. With other hardware is it much faster – I think a Raspberry Pi with a USB drive will be excellent.
Synching seems based on Go, and Go seems not to be available for PowerPC, so my old G4 that has been struggling with ownCloud for a while will need something else to do.
Update 2015-10-11: RAM Usage
Adding more files (and more devices?) to your Syncthing environment increases RAM demands. Consider the below table a draft.
| Device | Shares | Files | MBs | RAM MBs |
| QNAP TS-109 | 2 | 1045 | 687 | 27 |
| Raspberry Pi1 | 9 | 8094 | 46500 | 82 |
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