rclone — The Complete Guide: Sync and Back Up to 70+ Cloud Services From the Command Line
rclone is an open-source command-line tool for managing files across more than 70 storage services and protocols — Google Drive, S3, Dropbox, Azure, WebDAV, SFTP and more. For an engineering office it solves a familiar problem: project archives scattered across several cloud services, with no convenient way to move or back them up.
rclone
rclone project
Sync and copy files to 70+ cloud storage services from the command line, and mount cloud drives as local disks.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- One-way and two-way sync — between a local folder and the cloud, or between two services.
- Copying with integrity checks — confirming files arrived exactly as they left.
- Client-side encryption — files are encrypted before they reach the provider.
- Mounting as a drive — cloud storage appears as a drive on your computer.
- Script-friendly — run it regularly from the task scheduler.
Practical uses
Moving an archive of finished projects to a cheaper storage service, a nightly backup of the projects folder to S3 storage. Run it first with the dry-run option to see what will change — especially with the sync command, which deletes files on the target that are not in the source.
Related tools
For versioned, encrypted backup — restic or Kopia. To transfer files to a server with a graphical interface — WinSCP.
restic
restic project
Fast, encrypted, deduplicated backups — project folders to disk, NAS or cloud storage.
Get it from the vendor
Kopia
Kopia project
Encrypted incremental backup with a GUI and scheduling — to local disks or the cloud storage of your choice.
Get it from the vendor
Syncthing
Syncthing Foundation
Sync files directly between computers, with no cloud — identical project folders at the office, at home and on site.
Get it from the vendorWinSCP
Martin Přikryl
SFTP and FTP client for Windows — move files to servers, HPC clusters and controllers, with sync and scripting.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
rclone is a free Swiss army knife for cloud storage: one tool for every service, with full control and no unnecessary interface.