rsync not working between NTFS/FAT and EXT

I have music that I play in my car, from an FAT32 USB stick. The folder which I use to put songs on is stored on my EXT4 hard drive. I add/remove/retag songs regularly and occasionally want to rsync the changes to the USB stick. But for some unknown reason (maybe permissions?), rsync copies all the files every time rather than just changed ones. I am calling rsync like:

rsync -vrlptgD source dest

How can I make it work like I want it to (i. e. know when a file hasn't been changed and don't copy it)?

Solution 1:

Javier Rivera's answer works, but it takes quite long for rsync to check and compare all file checksums. I found that using the following option worked better for me:

rsync -rtv --modify-window=1 /source /dest

The --modify-window=1 switch allows for a variance of ±1s on the timestamps. With this option enabled, timestamp comparison will be more lenient and look over the minuscule time differences between NTFS/FAT and Unix file systems.

Source (ger): http://www.kai-hildebrandt.de/tutorials/rsync.html

P.S.: Please be aware that DST will cause full file transfers twice a year. See here for further details and possible solutions.

Solution 2:

Timestamps in FAT32 are too different from unix ones to rely on them to check for file changes, you should use also the -c switch, it will force rsync to compare all the files to detect changes instead of relying in timestamps. It will work, but it's slower.

Finally, there are a couple of options in your command that can't work with FAT32 file systems.

• -l will preserve links, FAT32 has no concept of links
• -p will try to preserve permission, again no permissions on FAT32
• -t will try to preserve modification timestamps, there is only one timestamp on FAT32
• -g will try to preserve group ownership, again not supported by FAT32
• -D will try to preserver special files and devices, you now what comes here.

As htorque comments, the invalid options will no hurt you, they just will do nothing. But you must add -c switch.

This:

rsync -vrc source dest

should work (at least it works on my computer).