how to tell what files changed?

[John Van Essen]

On Wed, 5 Apr 2006, Erik Neumann <erikn at myphysicslab.com> wrote:
> Seems that many of the files I just transferred from Windows to
> Mac OS X came across with ***blank creation dates***.

Egad -  rsyncing between different OSes and neither OS is *nix.
That's pretty rare.  Although Mac OS X is technically *nix I guess.

> When rsync makes copies on the target, those copies get a creation
> date that is equal to the modification date.... therefore the two
> files are not the same (the creation date is blank on Mac OS X file,
> but is not blank in the target archive), and rsync has to check all
> these "blank creation date" files.

Rsync doesn's care about creation dates - only modification dates. 

[ snip ]

> BTW, here is the command I've been using:
> 
>    sudo rsync -E -a -x -S --delete --exclude=Library/Caches  --stats ~ /Volumes/backup_40GB
> 
> the -a option includes -t so that wasn't the problem.

Right.  Where are you running this - on the Mac and copying to a
mounted Windows filesystem?  If so, then you are probably falling
victim to the 2 second granularity mentioned in the cited section
in the FAQ, and roughly half your files will be getting re-synced
every time if you are transferring files to a Windows filesystem.

Try adding  --modify-window=1

    John