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Add to SafariWhen comparing BitTorrent Sync vs rsync, the Slant community recommends rsync for most people. In the question“What are the best personal file-syncing solutions?” rsync is ranked 2nd while BitTorrent Sync is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose rsync is:
Only the changed parts of files are synced. For instance, if a long log file increases by just a few lines of text, a small diff will be sent to and saved in the archive. Rsync also compresses data in transit.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro No service cost, storage limits, perfomance limits or privacy concerns
Since BitTorrent Sync uses P2P technology and does not require an external server from a third party, the only limitation if what is available to the user.
Pro Clients on most platforms available
BitTorrent Sync is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BSD.
Pro Self hosted
If user opens a malicious website that website may create users to access your data ("When registering, http traffic for creating new user on loopback http://127.0.0.1:8888"). Being self hosted one does not need to open a site to get to their files.
Pro Fast and bandwidth efficient
Only the changed parts of files are synced. For instance, if a long log file increases by just a few lines of text, a small diff will be sent to and saved in the archive. Rsync also compresses data in transit.
Pro Works over SSH
SSH support allows sending files securely over the network by encrypting all communcation.
Pro Pre-installed on OSX and most Linux distributions
Many *nix systems bundle rsync so there's nothing to install. All you need to do is open up the terminal and start using rsync.
Pro Free and open source
Licensed under GNU.
Cons
Con Proprietary
Being proprietary, it's harder to audit.
Con Has some risky attack vectors
The only really good thing it has is that data is self-hosted (i.e. hosted on a server running on your machine with data that are on your machine).
- If user opens a malicious website that website may create users to access your data ("When registering, http traffic for creating new user on loopback http://127.0.0.1:8888")
- GetSync.com server receives many (all?) hashes in cleartext when sharing the directory.
Con Pro version for a fee
Selective Sync only available in Pro version. Business use is not allowed with free and Pro versions.
Con One peer of your network always has to be online to propagate changes to the other peers
Con Android app drains battery fast
Con No official GUI
To use rsync, you have to know your way around the command line.
Con Complicated, and you can accidentally overwrite the wrong files
