Huh, interesting. I’ll bear that in mind - I don’t like the idea of a system clock error causing an old file to overwrite a new one!

I recall a lot of my peers hosting mail and web servers

I don’t think that’s representative of the global population. There’s more people streaming movies than hosting private blogs.

Curious about your point about time conflicts. Doesn’t syncthing look at the change on your machine compared to the ‘canonical’ list also stored on your machine? So even if the timestamp is different, syncthing still detects the change, and the only problem is if the file is simultaneously modified on another machine before being propagated - which would be a conflict anyway.

If you ask Syncthing how to do local sync (e.g. to an external HDD), the answer is, use the right tool for the job: Unison.

If you ask Unison how to do certain things (directory timestamps is the one I miss), the answer is, use the right tool for the job: rsync.

In the end, it all comes down to rsync.

P.S. I’m actually gradually migrating up the chain from rsync, having used my own hand-built utility to make convenient rsync commands, but now using syncthing and Unison more.

Kind of. That improves your backup safety, but doesn’t mitigate all the risks. E.g. if you accidentally delete everything from your backup directory, then all those deletions also happen on the sync’d one.

I think really it’s designed because you’re a consumer. Most people consume far more bandwidth than they upload, so asymmetry is more efficient.