Sync and Backup with Rsync

Storage is cheap; time is not. Fortunately, the best backup tool around is free; Rsync.

If you have a mac or linux computer, or one of each, rsync offers a very flexible way of transferring files between them. I like to keep my music on my Mac computer, for ease of use around home, but I also like to mirror the music collection on a linux computer, both for backing up and for making available to myself when I travel, via a server. Rsync makes mirroring my music collection very easy. I open a terminal window and enter the following command:

rsync -avz --delete '/Volumes/unix_2/iTunes/iTunes Music/' ryan@192.168.0.100:/home/share/music

Let's decompose this command (note it would all be on the same line).

rsync
The command.

-avz
Tells rsync to copy files in archive mode, preserving directories and permissions, verbose mode to show all changes made, and compress (z) files to make the transfer faster.

--delete
Tells rsync to delete any files at the destination that have been deleted in the source destination.

'/Volumes/unix_2/iTunes/iTunes Music/'
The source of my music. the single quotes are only necessary because of the space in the "iTunes Music" folder.

ryan@192.168.0.100
My login name is "ryan" on the destination computer located at 192.168.0.100. I discovered that computer's internal IP address by running the command "ifconfig" on it.

:
You need this between the computer's IP address and the directory destination.

/home/share/music
The destination of the music on the backup/server computer. Note that there is no trailing "/".