Move media from your home computer or NAS to Bytesized

Want to copy your existing media library, from a home PC, Mac, or NAS (Synology, QNAP, WD MyCloud, and so on) up to your Bytesized Appbox? This guide covers two routes.

First, a common point of confusion

rsync is not an application you install on your Appbox. It's a command-line tool that runs on your end (your laptop, desktop, or NAS) and pushes files up to your Appbox over SSH. If you went looking for "rsync" in the Install Application screen on the dashboard, that's why you didn't find it. There's nothing to install there.

You have two practical paths:

Easy path: Syncthing. Free, graphical UI, runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and many NAS devices. Recommended if you'd rather not touch a terminal, or if your NAS doesn't have an SSH shell.
Power-user path: rsync. Command-line, very efficient, resumable. Recommended if you're comfortable with SSH and want a one-shot mirror.

Note: If your data is already on another seedbox rather than a personal computer or NAS, see Getting data from other seedboxes instead.

Easy path: Syncthing

Syncthing is a free, open-source file-sync tool with a friendly web UI. It's pre-installed on every Bytesized Appbox.

From your Appbox dashboard, open Syncthing. In the top-right menu choose Actions, Show ID and copy the device ID.
Install Syncthing on the computer (or NAS) where your media currently lives. See the Syncthing download page. Windows users may prefer SyncTrayzor.
If your media lives on a NAS without native Syncthing support (most WD MyCloud models, some older Synology and QNAP units), mount the NAS share as a normal network drive on a computer that does run Syncthing (SMB on Windows and macOS, CIFS on Linux), and point Syncthing at the mounted folder.
In your local Syncthing, click Add Folder, pick the source folder, and on the Sharing tab share it with your Appbox's device ID.
Back in your Appbox's Syncthing UI, accept the incoming share and choose where it should land (for example media/Movies).

Files start copying in the background. You can close your laptop and re-open it. Syncthing resumes where it left off. When the copy is complete you can unshare the folder if you only wanted a one-time transfer.

Tip: Several NAS platforms can run Syncthing natively: Synology (Community Package), QNAP (QPKG), TrueNAS (jail or plugin). If yours supports it, install Syncthing directly on the NAS to remove the second computer from the loop.

Power-user path: rsync over SSH

Warning: This involves command-line work and an SSH key. Take it slowly and double-check the paths before you run anything.

This option works from any machine that has rsync and can open an outbound SSH connection. That includes Linux, macOS, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and most NAS devices with an SSH shell (Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, and some WD models with SSH explicitly enabled).

Setup

Set up an SSH key pair on the machine you're transferring from.
Copy the public key onto your Appbox by appending it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
Make sure the SSH private key is loaded in your local environment (for example via ssh-agent).
From the directory you want to send (for example your local Movies folder), run the loop below. Replace <username> and <servername> with the values from your Appbox dashboard.
```
while true; do
    rsync -avhzS --partial-dir=.partials --progress \
        . <username>@<servername>.bysh.me:media/Movies
    sleep 10
done
```

Tip: Run the loop inside a screen or tmux session so it keeps going after you close the terminal.

rsync options explained

-a: archive mode (preserves permissions, timestamps, symlinks)
-v: verbose output
-h: human-readable file sizes
-z: on-the-fly compression
-S: efficient handling of sparse files
--partial-dir=.partials: lets rsync resume interrupted transfers without resending whole files
--progress: shows per-file transfer progress

If rsync is interrupted, the loop waits 10 seconds and restarts automatically. Short network blips or server restarts don't lose progress.

Running rsync from a NAS

If your NAS has a usable SSH shell, the same rsync command works directly on the NAS. No second computer needed.

If your NAS does not expose a usable shell (most stock-firmware WD MyCloud Home, EX2, and EX4 models fall into this category), use the Easy path above with Syncthing on a desktop instead. That's the supported route for those devices.

Migrate From Personal Storage To Bytesized