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I'm trying to set up a backup routine that will copy files like-for-like. I've set up Rsync in a Mac Automator routine to sync a windows formatted removable drive attached to my MacBook to a NAS drive on my wifi network.

I'm using 'rsync -va', the source is 37GB - I left the routine running for around 12 hours and when I checked the destination folder it was over 80GB in size, I stopped the routine at this point.

If I run 'rsync -avnc' to check if the folders are the same, I get a full list of the sources contents - I'm assuming that this means that the files on the destination are not the same?

I'm happy to delete the destination folder and start again as I'm trying to perfect the routine so I can use Automator to easily do what I need it to do - What do I need to change in Rsync to get exact copies?

dazzathedrummer
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  • 1. Are you trying to copy sparse files? (ie does output of `ls -h` differ significantly from `du -xh`)? 2. Has your target folder got left-over temporaries from aborted `rsync` attempts? 3. You do know that in this instance it's probable that `rsync` is no better than `cp`? – roaima Dec 19 '15 at 11:59
  • Thanks for the reply - I'm not connected to the source drive at the moment so I can't check using Rsync at the moment but I will try later. I'm not sure about the temporaries - theres a folder called $RECYCLE.BIN that was created yesterday (all other source files are from 2014). What is cp? – dazzathedrummer Dec 19 '15 at 13:20

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I think I found the problem (sort of) - the source drive is formatted as NTFS and I had it attached to the Mac side of my MacBook where it was set to read-only.

I've since opened the drive in my windows partition (through parallels) and I'm able to browse the files - I'm going to compress and FTP the files to the nas drive - it's just an archive that won't change so it should give rsync a problem once it's there. .....then I think I'll reformat that drive!

dazzathedrummer
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