Hi Default, On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 08:36:42PM -0500, Default User wrote: > So, back to the original question: what in the world am I supposed to > do to have rsync copy so that the size change in the two drives is > equal, and DRIVE2 has (theoretically) the same data, taking up the same > space, as DRIVE1? > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > > BTW, I forgot to mention, FWIW, that the Borgbackup and rsnapshot > backups are of /home/user and its subdirectories only. Everything else > (all the system stuff) is backed up using Timeshift. The Timeshift > data, like everything else, is part of the stuff on DRIVE1.
I do not think that Borgbackup uses sparse files or hardlinks so there shouldn't be any difference there, but rsnapshot definitely does use hardlinks and if you used the recommended rsync arguments in rsnapshot then it would also retain the sparseness of any sparse files from whatever you backed up. I don't know about Timeshift. So, all that to say, unless you use -H and -S on your new rsync there will definitely be a discrepancy. I expect different fragmentation levels to also cause a discrepancy, with the new drive using less space as it started off empty and with no fragmentation. Beyond that, if I were worried I would compare the file tree file by file with a tool like sha512sum or better still xxhsum (from xxhash package) as that will likely be MUCH faster on an amd64 machine¹. If all the files were the same content then I would stop worrying. Thanks, Andy ¹ Last year I wrote this: https://strugglers.net/~andy/mothballed-blog/2024/04/20/for-file-integrity-testing-youre-wasting-your-time-with-md5/ -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
