Send files from one mac to another via internet

Combat squirrel · 1 Oct 2019 at 20:56

As title, I'm looking to send large amounts of data from my home mac, to my parents house that has a mac mini setup backing up to back blaze.

I want to backup for example 1 x 8TB drive from here, to an 8TB drive there - of course I know file transfers are limited by bandwidth.

I cannot use any file folder services such as dropbox, or google drive because it's not suitable or they cost money.

I cannot use icloud drive as both mac mini's are 250gb built in drives and icloud wont let me backup external drives.

Is there some sort of way I can use some software to 'see' the source/destination folders on the source and destination mac and just sync the folder - ideally it will watch the folder for any updates and send any new/updated files.

I guess some sort of VPN/FTP or something, but I have no idea what i'm doing with this - treat me as a beginner, help!

ChrisD. · 1 Oct 2019 at 22:57

rsync can do this via a VPN, you'll have to do some Googling to get it to work the way which you want though.

pepp77 · 1 Oct 2019 at 23:05

Teamviewer should do it, install on both, connect from one to the other and do a file transfer. I've never done 8TB, but I've done GBs without issue.

JUMPURS · 2 Oct 2019 at 09:14

That kind of data and the amount of faffing about, is shipping the drive to them not an option?

jsmoke · 2 Oct 2019 at 09:18

You could physically take your hectares your parents house and plug it into their computer.

Combat squirrel · 2 Oct 2019 at 10:59

pepp77 said:
Teamviewer should do it, install on both, connect from one to the other and do a file transfer. I've never done 8TB, but I've done GBs without issue.

Just tried it doesn't work - it only lets you see the local main drive, I need to see the attached USB drives.

Sending them the files in the post isn't an option, I need always on always access live networks for what I'm using it for.

Any more ideas? Im googling around, and VPN etc only throws up nord and stuff, i dont want that, I want to 'tunnel' between the 2 macs and access the folders as if its a network drive or something

ChrisD. · 2 Oct 2019 at 11:21

You absolutely need a VPN, there's no other way around it with normal software that isn't going to cost money. But neither you nor your parents are likely to run a firewall that's capable of a site to site VPN so you could set up something like OpenVPN on a device at either end, log onto the VPN and then mount the remote drive using afs.

Combat squirrel · 2 Oct 2019 at 11:30

ChrisD. said:
You absolutely need a VPN, there's no other way around it with normal software that isn't going to cost money. But neither you nor your parents are likely to run a firewall that's capable of a site to site VPN so you could set up something like OpenVPN on a device at either end, log onto the VPN and then mount the remote drive using afs.

Any guides you can recommend doing this ? Or a video tutorial for mac ? I've zero idea on stuff like this, I have an Asus router, parents have a BT homehub 6 - happy to get them a different one if it lets me do this.

JUMPURS · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:01

Combat squirrel said:
Just tried it doesn't work - it only lets you see the local main drive, I need to see the attached USB drives.

Sending them the files in the post isn't an option, I need always on always access live networks for what I'm using it for.

Any more ideas? Im googling around, and VPN etc only throws up nord and stuff, i dont want that, I want to 'tunnel' between the 2 macs and access the folders as if its a network drive or something

Have you tried apple screen sharing? Might work as you can drag and drop files on that.

Although it's gonna take you about 2 weeks to transfer the data (If you get an upload speed of 60Mbps but if it is home broadband likely to be much less). If your upload speed is only about 16MB that BT usually give for their fast broadband it'll take 44 days.

Would be easier to buy another drive and ship that. Is there no budget at all? Not sure what you mean by 'always on access live networks'. Are you going to be continually uploading this 8TB?

Failing that an openVPN server set up on one of the machines and connect to it. But keeping it alive for the length of time you will need and not having any drop outs is going to be hard without some form of syncing software. Just using standard file transferring will be risky and could be very time consuming if the files are large and you need to redo it.

ChrisD. · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:03

^ hence I mentioned rsync. You can keep data in sync between destinations and it will do delta sync's. So put the 8TB on a HDD, drive it to parents, set up the VPN, set up rsync and it'll only sync the changes. There's other software that will do this for you but most use rsync in the background, just with a fancy GUI driving it.

Combat squirrel · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:07

JUMPURS said:
Have you tried apple screen sharing? Might work as you can drag and drop files on that.

Although it's gonna take you about 2 weeks to transfer the data (If you get an upload speed of 60Mbps but if it is home broadband likely to be much less). If your upload speed is only about 16MB that BT usually give for their fast broadband it'll take 44 days.

Would be easier to buy another drive and ship that. Is there no budget at all? Not sure what you mean by 'always on access live networks'. Are you going to be continually uploading this 8TB?

Failing that an openVPN server set up on one of the machines and connect to it. But keeping it alive for the length of time you will need and not having any drop outs is going to be hard without some form of syncing software. Just using standard file transferring will be risky and could be very time consuming if the files are large and you need to redo it.

I don't see how I can get apple screen sharing to work over the internet, it seems to be a local network thing, or I could be wrong? Again I don't know enough on how to do this.

Its not about budget, its about having the ability to off site data to another one of my own machines - the 8TB comment was aimed at the size of the USB drive, I don't literally have 8TB to transfer - it would be transferred 'per job' - usually 15-40gb which is dooable - the data is already at the remote location, but I'm now wishing to add to it remotely.

I'm surprised there isn't any easy way to do this, its surely something fairly commonly required.

Sync software is no worries, freesync or cloudberry - however id need a folder or 'network' drive available on this pc to 'send' the data to - obviously that would be on the remote machine however.

ChrisD. · 2 Oct 2019 at 13:18

Is this data video content? If so, just add it into Plex and enable remote access with your parents as a sharing user. They just log into Plex at their end and watch away.

Combat squirrel · 2 Oct 2019 at 15:21

ChrisD. said:
Is this data video content? If so, just add it into Plex and enable remote access with your parents as a sharing user. They just log into Plex at their end and watch away.

No, just need to send data and no one is at the other end, just needs to work and send files via folder sync, enmass.

Surprised again this isn't a commonly needed thing.

ChrisD. · 2 Oct 2019 at 15:26

Combat squirrel said:
Surprised again this isn't a commonly needed thing.

Because people usually use OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc for this sort of thing.

pepp77 · 2 Oct 2019 at 15:27

Combat squirrel said:
Just tried it doesn't work - it only lets you see the local main drive, I need to see the attached USB drives.

Sending them the files in the post isn't an option, I need always on always access live networks for what I'm using it for.

Any more ideas? Im googling around, and VPN etc only throws up nord and stuff, i dont want that, I want to 'tunnel' between the 2 macs and access the folders as if its a network drive or something

Any drive with a letter should be seen by TV and allow files to be transferred.

However a bit of googling found this which might be of use - https://www.macstories.net/tutorial...nd-access-everything-remotely-with-an-iphone/

Combat squirrel · 2 Oct 2019 at 17:35

pepp77 said:
Any drive with a letter should be seen by TV and allow files to be transferred.

However a bit of googling found this which might be of use - https://www.macstories.net/tutorial...nd-access-everything-remotely-with-an-iphone/

Thank you I'll have a read.

Another idea iv had is - just bite the bullet and buy 2x external 2TB SSD's for the mac's (they are both mac mini's), and reinstall Mac OS on them - and use my icloud 2TB account to transfer it in the following manner:

Sync a folder from the USB to the desktop

Let icloud populate all macs with the data

At the other end sync that macs desktop to the local 8TB drive

Set it to cut and move any files rather than copy, so once its copied the next one in the chain will move (rather than copy) the data to its 'final resting point'