Thanks for the information! This was my first time using rsync and I guess that I had overlooked that option. I will most likely be changing my scripts to use this in the future, and will update the blog post when I get a chance.

- Mike

Isn’t –delete a bit dangerous? It gets rid of all “extraneous” files on the destination. If you happen to, just once, run it the “wrong way”, you’ve just deleted your only copy of something.

Why not instead use -u (–update, skip files that are newer on the receiver) and run it both directions. That way you get a bidirectional sync, with the newest files “winning”, no matter which machine they’re on. (You’d still need -a and want -z. -r is implied by -a.)

Just $0.02. If you have a machine you _want_ to be the “winner”, then –delete makes more sense. But for me, I often work on both machines and need to be sure to preserve newest.

Thanks a lot! I will take a look into it.

Mike Bombich (CarbonCopyCloner) has a guide that will give you a patched mac specific version 3.0.6 compared to the almost 3 year old 2.6.9 that Apple supplies with 10.6.

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html
He also uses other flags that will help preserve data such as creation times, ACL’s, Extended attributes, resource forks etc.

It is worth upgrading at both ends of the syncing too, incase you find you need to copy in the other direction in the future.