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I have a 500 GB file that I plan on backing up remotely. The file changes often. I'll be rsyncing it from a desktop to a server. Both can run rsync client or server.

What is the proper command for this? The ones I've tried sofar has been taking forever or simply acted strange.

Example and results:

rsync -cv --partial --inplace --no-whole-file /desktop/file1 myserver.com::module/file1 

Seems to work, but only if I do it twice (?!). Also, slow.

Does the above command do the checksumming on both computers, or only on the sending one? Is it correct otherwise?

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A file that large which changes often? You're going to get very, very disappointing results with rsync... –  Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jun 16 '10 at 11:55
Any other suggestions? I should be doable with some app, Dropbox's proprietary client does it very well. See forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=17631 –  Johan Allgoth Jun 16 '10 at 12:13
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1 Answer

It's never going to be fast, because rsync is going to have to read/checksum the entire file, and reading 500GB is going to take a long time, unless you've got it stored on SSDs or something.

Try rsync -vhz --partial --inplace <file/server stuff>.

-c means that it checksums the entire file BEFORE doing any transfers, rather than using the timestamp to see if it's changed, which means reading the whole file twice. If the timestamp isn't getting changed (it should), then you could just touch the file before running rsync.

If this isn't scripted, you can add --progress so you can see how it's doing as it runs.

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Yeah, I know 'large file == long handling'. But I feel I am missing something here, see the comment above. If Dropbox can do it so can we! =) I didn't say, but i also tried without -c, still slow. –  Johan Allgoth Jun 16 '10 at 12:14
also --inplace implies --partial –  Jack Douglas May 21 '12 at 9:47
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