21

I have two backup directories (dir1 and 2) on two different (local) HDDs and I want to create one of them. How can I really sync their contents so that both directories will have the same contents?

Improve this question
4
  • Do you want to do a one-way sync, or do you need to update the files both ways? Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 20:37
  • 1
    You seem to know one correct command (rsync). What have you tried so far? Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 20:57
  • @Kusalananda a one-way sync is enough for now because i want to delete dir1, but a two-way sync would be useful later. Commented Sep 16, 2017 at 18:02
  • 2
    @roaima I only tried rsync -rtvu dir1 dir2/ as mentioned here without --delete. Now i see that the problem was the missing '/' from the end of 'dir1'. Commented Sep 16, 2017 at 18:02

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
33

To sync the contents of dir1 to dir2 on the same system, type:

rsync -av --progress --delete dir1/ dir2

-a, --archive
        archive mode

--delete
        delete extraneous files from dest dirs

-v, --verbose
        Verbose mode (increase verbosity)

--progress
        show progress during transfer

                        — from rsync(1)

Note : The / after dir1 is necessary to mean "the contents of dir1".  Without the trailing slash, would place dir1, including the directory, within dir2. This would create a hierarchy that looks like:

…/dir2/dir1/[files]
Improve this answer
0

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.