How to do an incremental backup using RSYNC?

[forgeuk]

Hi Everyone, does RSYNC do incremental backups, I just ran it to backup my photos onto USB thumb drive using this:

rsync -arvz "/blah/My Photos" /Volumes/myUSBthumbdrive

It backs up fine, I run the command again, and it backs up the whole lot again, clearly nothing has changed since last running it.

If its not possible, could someone reccomend a backup program that meet these requirements, as I've tried alot of mac backup apps, and none of them do what I want...

- Backup multiple folders all over my hard drive to ONE location (USB drive)
- NOT backup the entire hard drive
- Incremental backup
- Scheduled backups (even using iCal will do)

Cheers!

 

[PsYkOoOoO]

Are you using Leopard? If you are, Time Machine is what you are looking for.

 

[forgeuk]

Yes, I'm using Leopard. Never tried Time Machine, as I thought it backed up your ENTIRE hard drive over and over again. I just want to backup a few folders to an 8GB USB stick once per day. Please tell me that Time machine will allow me to select specific folders to backup, rather than the whole drive.

RANT MODE: I really don't see the point of backing up the entire hard drive... the OS can be easily restored, all programs can be easily restored, the only thing that can't be is... photos, rare MP3 etc..

 

[mdfuller]

Try ChronoSync. Not free, but well worth it:

ChronoSync | Perform File and Folder Synchronizations and Backups Like Clockwork | Econ Technologies

 

[Collin Bl]

Time Machine allows you to exclude folders in the back up process and it only does files that have changed. If you want to go a step further your can use Time Machine Editor to change the frequency - i have mine set to back up once every 24 hours.

 

[forgeuk]

Thanks for the suggestions, I think in my case, time machine would be too much trouble, I only want to back up about 10 folders, so from what you said, I'd have to exclude everything else, seems a bit backward
But I'll have a go with it.

I did have a look at chronosync, if I remember, it only backs up one folder to another folder, so I guess I could install 10 copies.