Problems with a Backup Via Rsync
 

{{{I had a stroke in 2011, and I am brain-damaged and my short term memory is broken}}}

I have a 1/2 TB flash drive and once a month, I backup my music library to this flash drive, as I need all of my ID3 tags to be complete and correct. {yes, I am somewhat anal-retentive}

My rsync command is:

rsync --archive --delete --verbose --progress --stats {source} {destination}

Now, my {source} is approximately 184Gb, and it has generally worked as planned, but today it took alot longer than usual, and the {destination} was approximately 300Gb.

QUESTION:

I am asking how this has happened, how is the {destination} about 1.6 times the {source}

Are my rsync parameters incorrect?

{PS: yes, I really do the extended versions of the parameters}

Thank you for reading my question, and I would appreciate any assistance in this matter.

Have a great day!

Offhand, I don't see any issues with your command string. Me, I usually use

for backups.

You might want to take a look at the diff or meld commands. They may help you identify irregularities between the source and target. (Diff is command line; meld is GUI.)

Could it be a recursive. The -a (archive) is really a collection of parameters.

Recursive would not affect it since he is doing source -> destination. If, however, he has managed to do a source -> source at some time it may have a subdir in the source that accounts for the extra data. A typo in the past could also have given him extra space in the destination.

I suggest that, as has already been suggested, you look at both the source and the destination carefully to see if maybe something has been duplicated on either the source or destination (or both).

OK, I will look at the {destination} and see if anything looks "hinkey".... I will tell you what I did to myself in 1 or 2 days....

Thank you for your responses.....

CRAPCRAPCRAP!!!!!

I messed up on the rsync command.
It was, as usual, for me, to screw up with the ending '/' on the {source}.

Someone please kick me in the head!!!!!

Yep, ending the source path with a / says "transfer the contents of this directory" while not ending it with the / says "transfer this directory and all its contents". I have been bitten that way myself.

In your case since you did it one way one time and the other way another time it duplicated almost everything.