Ciao Alessandro, On 11/09/2015 05:01 PM, Alessandro Baggi wrote: > Hi list, > how to perform a differential backup using rsync? > > On web there is a great confusion about diff backup concept when > searched with rsync. > > Users says diff because it copy only differences. For me differential is > backup from last full backup. Which is basically the same...if you always use your last full backup as "base" directory. Use rsyn's --link-dest option to achieve this. Nice thing: Unchanged files will just be hardlinked to the original files and won't use additional disk space, but still each dataset is a coopmlete backup. There is no need to combine several incremental or differential backups to restore a certain state. Mike Rubel's page has already been mentioned. On http://www.drosera.ch/frank/computer/rsync.html I describe an alternate mechanism (using above mentioned --link-dest and an rsync-server) which overcomes some of the - imho - shortcomings of Mike's setup. And: rsync is a fan-tas-tic backup tool ;-) HTH Frank