Ask HN: How do you keep your work and home machine in sync?

[tejasm]

I primarily use a Macbook Pro for work and carry it everyday from home to my office. I'm tired of doing so, and hence I'm planning to get a mac mini for office.

I have a difficult time deciding how to keep my files in sync. I could use dropbox or Google drive but syncing every little change becomes operationally difficult. Also, when I'm traveling and working offline, I might not have access to files on the other machine.

What solution do you use to address these issue?

[CalRobert]

I leave my work laptop at work. After work I go to the pub, or a cafe, or to my apartment, and live life. Sometimes I work on personal projects, but _never_ on my work machine, and _never_ at work (the nature of invention assignment agreements makes this prudent).

Don't work for free.

[dsuth]

I like this answer, but sometimes I work from home. When I know this will be the case, I use dropbox to sync relevant files.

I have also used dropbox in remote locations, to keep a team synced up. It works ok, but works best if you keep a separate working directory (so saves don't automatically generate a sync to cloud).

[ColinWright]

I have a directory on each machine that are to be kept in sync, then I just put everything in a git repo. Go to work, pull, done. Go home, pull, done. Anything not in that directory is private to the machine, all my work is in the repo.

[RogerL]

I just work in the Dropbox folder itself. I.e I do not drag and drop at the end of the day - the code and/or documents live permanently in the Dropbox folder. I truly wished I could selectively eliminate files (don't duplicate .pyc files, or whatever), but it works. A nice benefit is how dropbox keeps backups of everything. A couple of times a stupid moment at the keyboard led me to blowing away a file before checking it in. No problem, Dropbox had it versioned.

[ctb_mg]

I keep work and personal projects separate.

Despite that, all my code is in git so it is synced wherever and whenever I need it, as long as I am disciplined about pushing to my central repo.

There is some data that I use on both home and work machines (vim config, bashrc, etc.) and that is in an "environment" git repository so it is easily syncable.

[usermac]

Shared bookmarks are most important to me so I use Pinboard.in and GetPocket on each computer. For documents I use MicroSoft OneCloud or whatever its called today. And lastly, my fav, is I have a SanDisc SD Plus Ultra II that lays very flat in my wallet yet opens to a USB. Love it.

[miduil]

https://superuser.com/questions/31512/how-to-synchronize-the...

[ForFreedom]

rsync would be good for small file size. If you were to sync for big files then you need a pretty good internet connection, like syncing 1GB file on a 10 MB would take under 15 mins.

[tejasm]

I'm personally not a big fan of working from home at night. However, at times, I have to work from home due to personal reasons and hence the questions.

Thanks for sharing your current solutions.

[tobyc]

I just slip it in to my bag and open it when I get home. I sometimes have a few issues with after-work beers interfering with the sync process, but generally it works OK.

[exelib]

I use unison from command line to sync files between pc's, backup server and mounted devices. Internally, if I remember me right, it's uses rsync.

[petecooper]

I use BitTorrent Sync.

http://www.getsync.com

[mappu]

Leave your work at the office.

[jhildings]

Yes, and in the cases when you want to work at something home just mail it or something