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  • I use --delete-after in this usage scenario, what's wrong with this? Commented Mar 30, 2015 at 7:52
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    --delete-after is fine, but unrelated to the issue at hand. Files missing from the source will be deleted after the copy is done. The issue I'm elucidating relates to a backup being done today that is identical to yesterday's but against an old existing out of date file that is not linked to yesterday's inode, but stored as a new file at twice the total disk-space when yesterday's identical copy is considered. Commented Mar 30, 2015 at 14:10
  • Not entirely sure what you question is. Have you considered rsnapshot? Also, consider writing a small script to relink "identical" files. I do both on my systems. Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 8:29
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    If you don't get the answer you need here, you can post on the rsync list. The rsync developers regularly answer questions there along with many advanced users. You can find them via lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync . I mostly lurk there and learn a lot. Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 22:32
  • rsnapshot wont recycle old backups - and I need to: if I have 2 mo and 2-mo+1 day old backups, I can cycle one in as the new target. Since ~5% of files change/day, I create 50K hardlinks instead of 10M. This speed diff allows backing up 5 servers/night vs not. hardlink(1) is slow (15x slower than rsync's metadata scan); pax is faster but thrashes HDD heads comparing old backup to new. rsync -n to get the delta list means hitting production servers twice (scanning 10M files is far more impact than copying the 50K changes). Ill mail the list about an option in rsync to allow this. Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 1:56