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I have an interesting model for maintaining synchronized, versional documents of things I am working on.

On any Mac or Windows machine I own, I can edit a document and have the changes enacted on other machines connected to the internet with little to no user interaction. Furthermore, I have a 30 day cycle of redundant copies in case I accidentally delete a file or edit something I don’t want edited. Finally, I have a networked, hardware raid array which decouples some hardware risks regarding the local copies.

It isn’t like I do anything THAT interesting or mission critical. I spent a little time thinking about this problem and ways to mitigate risks. It has some tradeoffs, and most of them I’m ok with. YMMV.

Lets get on with some diagrams after the break.

Above is the diagram which illustrates the components.

Lets go over the major components.

Microsoft Live Mesh (free)

I am experimenting with Microsoft Live Mesh. I enjoy it so far, but sometimes the syncing is a little slow. It has some interesting features which may be of some use to multi-user environments. Currently I’m a user of one though, and I’m only using it to move around documents. I can bounce between computers and occasionally beat the sync and have to wait a while for my files to appear. The Windows version starts at boot. My OS X version does not, and while that is easily solvable, it’s something I the user has to do. A tiny frustration, just like the location of My Documents.

If I’m offline for a while (on a plane or something), the changes are cached until the next time I’m online. 

Mozy Online Backup Service (~5 bucks a month)

Next step to that would be to add a layer of backup (and by backup I mean redundant copies). I do this by pointing an installation of Mozy at the folder. Mozy’s software checks to see if the file has been edited and if so, copies it to a web server. Thus I have a working changelog of all my documents, accessible from all my machines. Well, it’s not quite a changelog.. I don’t make any notes about what I changed from version to version yet. Subversion, which is frequently used for keeping track of changes in software code, does it this quite well.

As a convention, I set mine to C:SYNC, which is my Live Mesh sync folder. Thus anything I open/edit/create/save on one machine propagates to home computers, work computers, mobile computers, and is eventually backed up. On one dedicated machine, amongst the many items which are backed up, the SYNC folder is backed up.

Drobo, Mesh, and Mapped Network Drive

One final component for home availability is a small low power Eee PC which sits on a LAN connected to my Drobo. Data Robotics Inc make the Drobo, which holds 4 small drives and utilizes them in such a way as to make them less prone to mechanical hardware failure. It is also quite handy for storing pictures, video, music, and many other things. I have mine formatted as a single large volume, which I am comfortable with because of the layer of protection the Mozy system provides.

And that essentially sums up the major components of the system. I may revisit this system in a future post, but so far it has been working quite well.

Above you will also see one last diagram which illustrates the flow-path of a document through the system. I’m calling this a typical Use Case.