What's so great about rsync? First, it's designed to speed up file transfer by copying the differences between two files rather than copying an entire file every time. For example, when I'm writing this article, I can make a copy via rsync now and then another copy later. The second (and third, fourth, fifth, etc.) time I copy the file, rsync copies the differences only. That takes far less time, which is especially important when you're doing something like copying a whole directory offsite for daily backup. The first time may take a long time, but the next will only take a few minutes (assuming you don't change that much in the directory on a daily basis).

At Linux.com

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