this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Backup/Server Options - is Syncthing / Nextcloud really the go? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 3 weeks ago by oneser@lemmy.zip to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Unfortunately, as Lemmy doesn't appear to have an indexed search function I am not sure if this is a common question or not. Please point me to the necessary thread/s if this is answered elsewhere.

I'm looking to continue the ball rolling on my home server. Jellyfin setup was a nice dive back into networking, which I haven't done for quite some time and the logical next step is to get all the data we want to retain into a single hub.

Most searches seem to point to syncthing with nextcloud, but before I get started, I want to check I am really going in the right direction.

I would like to primarily remove the space burden from my devices and dump them all onto a few drives and a cloud backup (in case of physical loss of drives). I believe syncthing can do this, but some appear to say that it is not an effective archive tool.

I would like to be able to retrieve this data without much hassle for e.g. photo editing, and place the finished file back on the server. Preferably the local copy would be removed again, to reduce the need for extra space on each device. I would like to run this over nextcloud, but might be misunderstanding the software a bit.

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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 19 points 3 weeks ago

As others have said, sync isn't backup.

It may be part of a backup plan, however.

I use Syncthing on my mobile devices to keep data created on the devices synchronized to my server at home. Things like photos sync to home over any connection, while I sync other stuff only over wifi. Syncthing-Fork allows you to set these conditions on a per-folder-pair basis.

That server becomes my authoritative box for any data. All that data is then mirrored on a schedule to 2 other systems at home (a NAS and a large drive on another box).

The main server also has a cloud backup which runs continuously.

So I have 3 local copies of data to recover from if I have a hardware failure, and a cloud backup.

I find tools like Syncthing and Resilio are good for synchronization, especially mobile devices. But between full-pc-OS devices, I just use native tools (scripts and schedules) because I don't want synchronization, but specific patterns of copying/mirroring, etc.

I do use Resilio for ad-hoc access to almost any file on my server, since it's Conditional Sync feature permits me to connect with a mobile device from anywhere and sync only the selected files. So I can grab a movie or TV show, Resilio will sync it and I can watch it once the sync is complete.