On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Todd Cary todd@aristesoftware.com wrote:
Les -
A lot of the data needs to be moved in time to servers in other organizations (e.g. Rotary) or the data may be used as a repository for someone with just a notebook computer who would plug the HD into the computer. This is not my main data backup; I use rsync for that. http://www.toddcary.com/rotary/ is one example of data that needs to be shared.
Can rsync take ext4 data and copy it to a fat32 drive?
Yes, but you have to give up permissions and the modify time on a FAT32 is only accurate to 2 seconds. To rsync from an ext3/4 directory to a plugged-in USB drive use something like:
rsync -av --no-p --modify-window=1 <srcdir>/ /media/<volname>/<targetdir>/
and you might need --delete.
More info at man rsync.
Another possibility: always use tar, and put something like a Windows version of 7zip executable on the USB drive as well as the data. That way, Windows users can get the files out the tar archive.