Is there a mechanism by which one can store a load of say photos on a NAS or cloud, and only have some of them synchronised? Either something automatic like photos from the last month; or configurable, so that you could select a folder to sync whilst you work on those files then select a different folder at a different time. Ideally it would be transparent so if you were on your home wifi you could access everything, but when you travel only the select files are stored locally and the others would disappear.

I’m thinking of how best to use an ultra portable laptop with a small HD. Running Windows 10. I realise you can go and reconfigure say One Drive sync settings but I’d like something a bit easier and more seamless than that.

Robocopy?

Not sure my wife can handle command line tools…

That’s what batch scripts are for.

That someone will have to configure… me…

Looks like that’s what the folder selection bit on One Drive is for – didn’t realise this when I set it up.. you can browse all the folders on One Drive and click which ones to sync to the PC. This is exactly what I want – but ideally also for NAS.

Is it specifically photos, or just generic stuff?

Lightroom allows you to work on low res versions of your photos off the network, then when you get home it can apply it to the full res versions. I think it’s called smart previews or something like that.

Google Photo’s, it’s an upload process only though so put everything on the NAS and it’s all available in the cloud. For small HDD’s just keep what you actually need on there. No real point in having this weeks pics if they are online anyway.

Google drive allows for specific DL’s to each machine also you just check the stuff you want o bring down but you would have to keep updating the list.

Generic stuff – I only used photos as an example.

Problem with syncing is slow home broadband. Cannot think of a way round this. Unless you could use the same concept that OneDrive offers (selective sync) and then also somehow sync the NAS and OneDrive in the background.

Windows?

Try using SyncToy. Not exactly seamless but you could set up folder pairs and choose which are being synced.

Synology cloud sync would allow you to keep a Synology NAS and your one drive in sync all the time, might be worth looking at.

Synology cloud sync should do it

Try using SyncToy.

Christ, is that still going? I used to use SyncToy about fifteen years ago.

Some NASs such as Synology also support BitTorrentSync which isn’t bad. There is an older version that is more flexible than the newer version but I can’t remember the number now

Qbackup on my QNap NAS allows you to select which folders are backed up, dead simple. I’m pretty sure it’d work with a non qnap nas
I’ll have a look see if there’s a by date option in a bit

I don’t want backup, I want sync…

And the difference is?

I use Qbackup to sync my music folder to the NAS. It just creates a replica of the file structure on the NAS under Multimedia, so that I can use QMusic to play stuff on my phone.
Crap it is 🙄

Sync ensures files in multiple locations are the same. If you change either location it makes the other location the same. Its two-way. If you accidentally delete a file, it syncs that deletion to the remote copy and that gets deleted too.

Backup is archiving copies of your files at regular points through time. It’s one-way, in that you use your working copy and Windows changes are sent to the backup. If you accidentally delete a file you can go back to a previous backup where it still existed.

Very important difference! Both very important, but different. Also different from simple file copying too. You can for instance back up a synced file, and also sync a backed up file. With different results.

Sync allows you to sync more than one device with the remote copy. So sync a laptop with one drive, files then appear on the tablet and phone automatically.

Maybe not the most elegant solution but I use a mini PC (Intel NUC) on the network running Google Drive, it syncs all folders between NAS and cloud. Laptops then run Google Drive but only sync a working folder. I have to manually move things from the working folder when it gets a bit bloaty but that’s easy enough and can be done anywhere (usually at work 😳 ).

I have a wd mycloud Nas. It backs up my mac hdd using chronosync. The program let’s me schedule multiple backup events that can go multiple ways between devices and you can apply rules to what gets moved (I presume that incudes date variables too). So if everything is on your Nas, you could set it to selectively backup from the Nas into a folder on the laptop, take the laptop away, then on return, have another backup routine that copies back only the files that have changed.

The Nas drive has mycloud software which let’s me access the drives contents from anywhere online, but also allows me to download selected files and folders tithe device. Not really played with that bit much though.

Have you tried Google Drive??
https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375083?hl=en
Downside is you may fire errors if there is not something connected at all times
Other option is a DIY Cloud
https://owncloud.org/features/
Think that may give you a lot of the features you want
A lot will depend on the NAS and the features it supports – some will be happy being a file server type box and running Drive etc on there