Using windows sync client to sync to external storage

ℹ️ Support
1

I just wanted to see if there are any unobvious issues with doing this.

I have NC set up on my home server. I have an external storage setup.

On the Windows sync client, I want to sync my documents folder with NC but I want the NC folder to be a sub-folder on the external storage. It seems to let me set this up but I don’t know if it’ll have any negative impacts.

I don’t want to sync to an NC managed folder because I want the data accessible directly on the external storage outside of NC.

Would it be faster to use an NC managed folder or will there be no difference?

2

I’m trying to do this same thing.

I have an SMB External Storage folder that I’m trying to share to a group of NC users. The Sync client isn’t syncing the data.

3

@imthenachoman: do I understand correctly that you would like to know if there is any performance penalty when using “external storage app”, provided that other conditions remain the same (the external storage folder is on the same filesystem as the “NC managed storage” and the access method is “local”)?

Have you run some tests already?

4

No. I am using this setup right now and it works but I didn’t know if there are any unobvious reasons not to do it. I haven’t seen any performance issues but not sure if there is something behind the scenes that I might not be seeing.

5

If the external storage is really external, the data have to pass one more host, so it shouldn’t be faster. If you move larger folder directly on the external storage, it’s probably often considered like a new up-/download and the client will transfer data again, in contrast to changes through NC itself which catches the moving of files more reliably. Looks for me like this feature just fits your purpose.

6

So my NC installation data folder is on a 2nd HD mounted at /data. /data also has other folders that I wanted to be available in NC. At first I added it as an external storage but that way I couldn’t control permissions for NC users. So instead I added /data/[sub folders] as samba mounts. For example, I have my computer’s documents folder synced to /data/user1/docs and /data/user1 is added as a samba mount with user1s credentials.