Carl Bullard on 19 Apr 2010 05:01:17 -0700


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Re: [PLUG] How to manage your files among multiple PCs


Gordon,

While this may not help in your situation, I'm running into a similar situation.  I work between 2 computers and I'm about to add a 3rd into the mix.  Work laptop and 2 home desktops.  Right now I use DropBox to sync between my work laptop and home desktop.  I'm mainly syncing my to do list, keepass DB and some other stuff.  DropBox is great, you just drop stuff in a folder and when connected to the net it syncs it between the PCs.  When you're not online you still have access to your stuff.  A free account has a 2gb limit but you can buy a higher limit.

I was thinking when the new home pc arrives is to specify one as a primary.  That will be where I keep all docs that need to be archived and media.  I will then use DropBox in the same fashion and use network shares for media. 

I used DropBox primarily on Win32 systems, but it appears to work on Linux and Mac as well.  Once the new home pc arrives I'm converting the old one to Ubuntu and will install DropBox.

Carl

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 1:03 AM, Gordon Dexter <gordon@texasdex.com> wrote:
Way back when I only had one computer organizing my files was easy.  I
had nice and organized folder heirarchy, with everything in it's proper
place.  I'm a packrat, so I accumulate lots of junk, but as long as I
put everything in the right place it worked nicely.

Now I have a desktop, a server/HTPC that sometimes acts as a desktop, an
Eee (with not much space), and a few server accounts, and everything is
haphazard all over the place.  My laptop has some files, my desktop has
some different files, my server has a different set of files, and
everything is messy and disorganized.  My media collection is in spread
over two computers and my personal documents are sprawled out across
three or four, all the computers have some form of 'download' directory
with some useful stuff, and I'm starting to forget where I put things.
I even have older copies of my home folder from old installs, sitting in
subfolders of my current home directory.

I have been running my own Dovecot IMAPS server, so email is
synchronized among all computers, and I just set up Xmarks BYOS so
bookmarks are similarly common.  Those things are really nice, since I
don't have to think about what is on what computer, but I don't think
that would work for my media collection, at least in part because it
wouldn't fit on the server, and certainly not on my Eee.

I want to figure out a better way to organize files.  Network mounts
sound like the most obvious solution until my laptop is somewhere
without internet (or without port 22 outbound permitted).

What do you guys do to organize your home directories, media
collections, sprawling document piles, etc?  I've heard of people using
versioning systems, network mounts with offline cache, etc.  I'm sort of
looking for a series of specific programs or practices that might be
integrated into a holistic system for managing my digital clutter.

--Gordon

P.S. Bonus points if my wife's Mac can use it for backups

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--
Carl
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