rsync remove-source-files, how does it resume?

Question

I'm using rsync with --remove-source-files option as follows:

rsync --remove-source-files -arzvv --append /src /dst

But for some reason it fails (broken connection or OS kill its process), I would like to know how well it recovers/resume the failure file transfers if I run it again? Is it possible that my data has been deleted before transferring to the new destination?

Answer 1

The behavior of --remove-source-files is exactly that specified by man rsync:

--remove-source-files

This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the files (meaning non-directories) that are a part of the transfer and have been successfully duplicated on the receiving side.

So they are removed after all files are transferred successfully. If the transfer is interrupted or another error occurs, the source files are not removed, even if some of them transferred OK.