Sync folder between two computers using both local network and cloud

Question

I'm looking for a way to do the following:

1. Sync folder A on my laptop with folder B on my PC by transferring any changes on one machine onto the other machine using the local network.
2. If I modify one of the folders while the other machine is off, the changes are uploaded to cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive or OneDrive, and downloaded to the other machine once it is turned on. When the change is synced the data can be deleted from the cloud.

I am able to do #1 by turning on sharing over the local network for each folder and using FreeFileSync on each computer to sync the local folder to the other one. However I would like my changes to sync without having to keep both machines on at the same time.

The folders are too large to keep completely in the cloud, but the changes I make each day are not.

Answer 1

This can be done with rsync, but it requires having two copies of the data on the sending side.

1. Create two identical local copies of your data: "working" and "original".
2. Edit "working" in whatever way you want.
3. rsync -a --write-batch="diff-file" working/ original/
   • This will sync all your edits from "working" to "original", but also create a file "diff-file" containing only the differences.
4. Upload "diff-file" to the cloud.

On the recieving machine:

1. Download "diff-file" from the cloud.
2. rsync -a --read-batch="diff-file" localcopy/
3. Delete "diff-file".