I currently back up the contents of an external hard drive A by (1) deleting everything in the destination external hard drive B and (2) copying everything from A to B (in Finder). The external hard drive only contains “basic data” (folders, images, videos, documents, etc.), nothing fancy/weird.
But with all the amazing free tools that exist out there I couldn't find a decent one to backup (suggestions accepted).
I want to automize this. After a few searches, it seems I can use rsync
. I want then to automize this by using rsync
to avoid copying files that are already on the destination hard drive (of course, if a change has been made, I want to update the file/folder; the same with deleted files/folders or new files/folders; the idea is to mimic what I usually do manually with Finder).
I got to this point
rsync -av --progress --delete /Volumes/A/ /Volumes/B
Now the log is full of files which name starts with .
or ._
or even ._.
. Are they necessary?
Question
How can I copy only the files that matter, leaving all those that don't matter behind. For example, if I have photo.png
I would expect to copy photo.png
, not ._photo.png
or many files.
What --exclude
or --exclude-from
can be used safely on a Mac? May be a good rule is “just copy anything that Finder shows” which is what I would copy if I passed manually through all folders.
Extra question
Is -av --progress --delete
enough? Am I committing a crime or risking some data? What options would you use.
Please, back your answer with some arguments, I would appreciate it.
I'm looking for a way to automate rsync
which seems quite powerful and free to use.