I think you need a u in the options. -u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver it might also be an idea to use --dry-run to see what it's going to do.
Nev
On 15/02/13 12:29, mick wrote:
As it says really. I need some advice on an rsync mechanism I use to routinely backup my desktop to my NAS.
The command I have used for some time is:
/usr/bin/rsync -rLptgoDvz --stats / --exclude-from=rsync-excludes /home/mick nas:/home/mick-backup
("/" indicates line break above and is not part of the command line)
That has worked fine for some long time, but I have just upgraded my desktop disk from 1TB to 2TB. In the process of doing so I moved the old disk to a new SATA port so that I could just copy across internally all my data from the old disk to the new. In doing so (using something like "cp -r /old-disk/micks-stuff /new-disk/micks-stuff") like a pillock I forgot to add the -p switch so all my files now have a current date/time as last modified. Guess what? My latest rsync now seems to be updating ALL by backed up files (over 800 GB of videos/photos/music etc) to the NAS. This will take some time.
I thought that rsync used a rather more sophisticated algorithm (including checksums for example) than simply a check of last modified time stamp. In trying to reduce the file transfer I have tried modifying the rsync command by taking out the -t switch, but of course that doesn't work, all that happens is that the target file date/time remains unmodified after the copy.
So, short of actually letting the rsync run to completion, can anyone suggest a better approach (and yes, I know I could have saved myself a lot of pain by being more careful earlier....)