I don't understand why git-annex is dismissed. The only reason given is "But for that reason, it's impossible to fit all my 200Gb of Stuff[tm]into the 120Gb of

I don't understand why git-annex is dismissed. The only reason given is "But for that reason, it's impossible to fit all my 200Gb of Stuff[tm]into the 120Gb of SSD on my work laptop.". Except that with git-annex, you don't have to keep all the files in all places. Files not present are represented as broken symlinks exactly as described. You can even specify pattern matches to determine what files are kept where by default (and override as necessary).