Title is TLDR. More info about what I'm trying to do below.
My daily driver computer is Laptop with an SSD. No possibility to expand.
So for storage of lots n lots of files, I have an old, low resource Desktop with a bunch of HDDs plugged in (mostly via USB).
I can access Desktop files via SSH/SFTP on the LAN. But it can be quite slow.
And sometimes (not too often; this isn't a main requirement) I take Laptop to use elsewhere. I do not plan to make Desktop available outside the network so I need to have a copy of required files on Laptop.
Therefor, sometimes I like to move the remote files from Desktop to Laptop to work on them. To make a sort of local cache. This could be individual files or directory trees.
But then I have a mess of duplication. Sometimes I forget to put the files back.
Seems like Laptop could be a lot more clever than I am and help with this. Like could it always fetch a remote file which is being edited and save it locally?
Is there any way to have Laptop fetch files, information about file trees, etc, located on Desktop when needed and smartly put them back after editing?
Or even keep some stuff around. Like lists of files, attributes, thumbnails etc. Even browsing the directory tree on Desktop can be slow sometimes.
I am not sure what this would be called.
Ideas and tools I am already comfortable with:
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rsync is the most obvious foundation to work from but I am not sure exactly what would be the best configuration and how to manage it.
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luckybackup is my favorite rsync GUI front end; it lets you save profiles, jobs etc which is sweet
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freeFileSync is another GUI front end I've used but I am preferring lucky/rsync these days
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I don't think git is a viable solution here because there are already git directories included, there are many non-text files, and some of the directory trees are so large that they would cause git to choke looking at all the files.
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syncthing might work. I've been having issues with it lately but I may have gotten these ironed out.
Something a little more transparent than the above would be cool but I am not sure if that exists?
Any help appreciated even just idea on what to web search for because I am stumped even on that.
This sounds like a setup that is broken in a few ways. First, you need to clean up the desktop. Start by replacing the USB drives. It is a bad idea to use them as they are more likely to fail and have limited speeds. I would get either moderately high RPM hard drives or sata SSDs. Both will be more reliable and have greater speed. Just make sure that they are properly mounted. This is especially important for HDDs as they are very sensitive to vibration and need to be kept still by a proper mount with rubber padding.
For the desktop itself, make sure it is fast enough to provide enough throughput. You should be using a CPU with at least 4 cores and DDR4 memory. The more memory you have the more data can be cached. I would go for 16 or 32gb and if you can go even higher. Also make sure you are using gigabit Ethernet with a gigabit switch.
Now for the software. I would install TrueNAS scale as it uses ZFS which is a create filesystem for data storage. TrueNAS can be a little tricky but it is all controllable though a web interface and if you need help guides can be found online.
For accessing the data, I would use either a SMB or NFS share. Smb tends to be simpler and has better cross platform support. NFS can be faster but it is tricky to configure. Make sure that your laptop has a Ethernet connection as doing things over WiFi is going to be slow. You might be able to get away with it if you have a newer wifi revision with a newer WiFi card.
If you are still looking to solve the original problem, you can use Syncthing. Syncthing has a few click install for TrueNAS and you can find guides on how to configure it in a way that works for you.
Maybe Syncthing is the way forward. I use it for years and am reasonably comfortable with it. When it works, it works. Problems is that when it doesn't work, it's hard to solve or even to know about. For the present use case it would involve making a lot of shares and manually toggling them on and off all the time. And would need to have some kind of error checking system also to avoid deleting unsynced files.
Others have also suggested NFS but I am having a difficult time finding basic info about what it is and what I can expect. How is it different than using SSHFS mounted? Assuming I continue limping along on my existing hardware, do you think it can do any of the local caching type stuff I was hoping for?
Re the hardware, thanks for the feedback! I am only recently learning about this side of computing. Am not a gamer and usually have had laptops, so never got too much into the hardware.
I have actually 2 desktops, both 10+ years old. 1 is a macmini so there is no chance of getting the storage properly installed. I believe the CPU is better and it has more RAM because it was upgraded when it was my main machine. The other is a "small" tower (about 14") picked up cheaply to learn about PCs. Has not been upgraded at all other than SSD for the system drive. Both running debian now.
In another comment I ran iperf3 Laptop (wifi) ---> Desktop (ethernet) which was about 80-90MBits/s. Whereas Desktop ---> OtherDesktop was in the 900-950 MBits/s range. So I think I can say the networking is fine enough when it's all ethernet.
One thing I wasn't expecting from the tower is that it only supports 2x internal HDDs. I was hoping to get all the loose USB devices inside the box, like you suggest. It didn't occur to me that I could only get the system drive + one extra. I don't know if that's common? Or if there is some way to expand the capacity? There isn't too much room inside the box but if there was a way to add trays, most of them could fit inside with a bit of air between them.
This is the kind of pitfall I wanted to learn about when I bought this machine so I guess it's doing its job. :)
Efforts to research what I would like to have instead have led me to be quite overwhelmed. I find a lot of people online who have way more time and resources to devote than I do, who want really high performance. I always just want "good enough". If I followed the advice I found online I would end up with a PC costing more than everything else I own in the world put together.
As far as I can tell, the solution for the miniPC type device is to buy an external drive holder rack. Do you agree? They are sooo expensive though, like $200-300 for basically a box. I don't understand why they cost so much.
As I understand the PC case is some sort of small form factor and the motherboard has more SATA ports to plug in disks.
If that's the case then try to find old pc case in the dumpster or from a neighbour. It should have more space for disks.
Some PCs 15 years ago had incompatible layouts so be a little cautious but gratis is a fair price.
Do you mean take the board out of this case and put it in another, bigger one?
I actually do have a larger, older tower that I fished out of the trash. Came with a 56k modem! But I don't know if they would fit together. I also don't notice anywhere particularly suitable to holding a bunch of storage; I guess I would have to buy (or make?) some pieces.
Here is the board configuration for the Small Form Factor:
I did try using #9 and #10 for storage and I seem to recall it kind of worked but didn't totally work but not sure of the details. But hey, at least I can use a CD drive and a floppy drive at the same time!
As far as I can see you could try to attach 1 ssd to SATA0 (it can dangle in the air) and 2 hard drives to SATA1 and SATA2 (They are capped to 300MB/s and should be attached to the case with screws)
There should be space somewhere to put the drives as I can see in the specification. You will probably need to remove the CD drive.
There is also a question if power supply has enough power sockets to attach to the disks. You could try to find eSATA -> SATA adapter to attach something to the last port.
You probably won't find the bigger case as motherboard isn't standard size.
I would probably try to upgrade to standard motherboard size but I would also calculate the cost of consumed electricity in a year vs cost of more efficient hardware.