From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1OIKht-0006JE-36 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sat, 29 May 2010 12:00:01 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id DB5ABE0A9D; Sat, 29 May 2010 11:59:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.osagesoftware.com (osagesoftware.com [216.144.204.42]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B13E6E0A9D for ; Sat, 29 May 2010 11:59:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from osage.osagesoftware.com (osage.osagesoftware.com [192.168.1.10]) by mail.osagesoftware.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id ECE6A1672 for ; Sat, 29 May 2010 07:59:31 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 07:59:31 -0400 From: David Relson To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] rsync to a USB stick Message-ID: <20100529075931.5e49c2ce@osage.osagesoftware.com> In-Reply-To: <201005291001.50752.michaelkintzios@gmail.com> References: <201005291001.50752.michaelkintzios@gmail.com> Organization: Osage Software Systems, Inc. X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.5 (GTK+ 2.18.9; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: ff07fd93-e64e-46ea-9a95-ddbf63993dfd X-Archives-Hash: 5da5cfa559149b16f7276002ce3d1c3d On Sat, 29 May 2010 10:01:39 +0100 Mick wrote: > Hi All, > > I run: > > rsync -a -l --delete -v /mnt/Business_dir /media/sdf1 > > to back up a directory from a PC to a USB stick. However, from a > cursory look this *seems* to copy the complete directory (every time > I run it) and overwrites the USB stick. Carrying on like this it > will life-expire the USB stick in no time, plus it takes ages to > complete as it copies over every single file again and again. > > Is there a cleverer option I can add to rsync so that it only copies > new files, overwrites older versions of the same and only deletes any > files or directories that have been deleted from the source directory? > -- > Regards, > Mick For years I've used "rsync -Cavzu ..." to do updates. That's been my mantra for so long I don't recall what each option does do know that it updates (rather than copies everything). Indeed flash drives _do_ have a lifetime. My recollection is that it's in the thousands of writes if not the hundreds of thousands of writes. Assuming a life of 1,000 writes and you backup once daily, that's 3 years of backups. 10,000 writes would be 30 years. Of course if you backup every hour, 10,000 writes is a year (or so). Honestly, I've stopped worrying about manual copies to flash drives. Of course if you have a program that writes to a flash drive frequently, that's a very different story ... HTH, David