Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > That is obviously an overgeneralization and incorrect > in any number of cases. Change a couple of bytes in > an iso image on the other end of a dialup line. Would > you rather let rsync find and send the difference or > wait for the whole thing? A pre-built rdiff delta could > give you that even faster. Let me say that word again ... R-I-P-P-L-E What that means is that you have not 1, but *N* diffs. Maybe I can explain it in another way. If you do an incremental backup, is there a difference from doing a backup from the last full backup and the previous incremental? Of course! If you do an incremental from the last full, you only need the last full backup and that incremental. But if you do an incremental from the previous incremental, then you need not only the full, not only that incremental, but every incremental that is based on each incremental before that. Diffs are merely the difference between two files. Deltas are the differences between _multiple_ files. And that's before we even consider the sheer size of these files. Text is a crapload easier to delta (just like compression) than binaries, especially when you're talking very, very large files that are starting to take significant chunks of your server's memory. > > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikesell at gmail.com > > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > -- Bryan J. Smith | Sent from Yahoo Mail mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org | (please excuse any http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ | missing headers)