<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"><html><head><meta content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></head><body ><div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><div>Robin Wrote:<br></div><div>> So I'm not quite following your Windows rsync problem. <br></div><div>Specifically, do you mean: <br></div><div> <br></div><div>>"I copied files A, B, and C, and there's still 3 files but each file <br></div><div>is bigger" <br></div><div> <br></div><div>> or <br></div><div> <br></div><div>> "I copied files A, B, and C to a directory containing files that I <br></div><div>> thought were identical using the -b flag but now there's twice as <br></div><div><br></div><div>I'm astounded you seem to think I used the -b flag but you must know that it was you who introduced the topic of -b flag. That suggestion came after all rsyncing was done.<br></div><div>I expect the -b flag will play a big role in cleaning things up.<br></div><div><br></div><div>> many files because apparently rsync thinks none of them are <br></div><div>> identical" <br></div><div> <br></div><div>Ok, sorry to be unclear... but really I'm not writing in ancient Sanscrit here.<br></div><div><br></div><div>There was no copying done at all. Everything was and will be done with rsync. I still have not tried the -b option but expect that to be very helpful.<br></div><div><br></div><div>I explained how I ran rsync from an Images/ directory on one linux host directly into an Images directory on another linux host.<br></div><div><br></div><div>rsync -vvrptgoD --stats LINHOST1:/Images/ LINHOST2:/Images/<br></div><div><br></div><div>I thought the directories were too large to examine them much by hand but I knew how they were built and knew they were at least very similar.<br></div><div>both structurally and content wise. So that first merge went about how I expected there was a small overall size increase of a few hundred MB.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Then I ran "rsync -vvrptgoD winHOST:/Images/ LINHOST2:/Images/" so from the win host to the already once merged LINHOST2:/Images. Both directories showed quite similar size according to "du -sh" before rsyncing.<br></div><div><br></div><div>However when the rsyncing was through the LINHOST2:/Images directory had grown considerably. I still have not examined by hand but clearly something unexpected has happened. I expect I'll find some significant differences I'd forgotten about.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Until I stop and examine things closely; any further discussion will be kind of lame. I was putting off a pains taking examination but I see it must be done.<br></div><div><br></div><div>These thousands of images have built up from 2008 to late 2021 and many Phone camera images have been added since then. So I need to be careful with them. With that in mind I have kept backups of all three directories in their original state.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Thank you much for your input so far. I expect to be a good little while examining things. In fact I see now this will be a major undertaking.<br></div><div> <br></div></div><br></body></html>