I’m syncing large amount of footage and images.
In my main workstation all is stored in internal disks but at my laptop I have different shares sync to different external disks. The laptop is online sporadically and also the external disks is hooked up only when using them. I’ve got 3-4 different external share disks and I’m adding more as they fill up.
My problem is that if I do changes in the work station, like sorting photos into folders, then later when the external disk is up the laptop syncs those files from the old location to the workstation so I end up with duplicate files all over.
Often folders contain 40-50Gb each and I’ve forgotten which folders I’ve been working with since last time that disk was online so it becomes a mess to sort out.
I can only think of hacks of how this could be handled, there is no sensible robust way to do this. I don’t think any sync software handles content changing under the same path.
I’m not certain I understand properly your setup, but I guess this could work if you have unique folders per disk.
That is, on your workstation you have two folders Work and Play that are always accessible, and on the laptop these live on separate external disks. Make sure to have the same folders on those disks: Work on one of them, and Play on the other. When the work disk is mounted (on D: let’s say) you will have D:\Work and this is the folder root that Syncthing works with. When the play disk is mounted you will instead have D:\Play with the play files. In both cases one folder will be offline from Syncthing’s point of view when the other one is online.
As Audrius says you can not just point Syncthing at D:\ and change disks around at that location.