Destination drive has more space used than source?

[Truder]

Hello friends,

I've been using rsync for quite some time using a script my friend wrote for me. I'm backing up one external hard drive to an identical external hard drive (both same make and model). I have about 1.8TB of data and I plug in my backup and run this command about every six months. I'm using the following commands on rsync 3.0.9:

rsync --progress -av --delete /cygdrive/e/ /cygdrive/f/ > ~/rsync.out &

and

tail -f ~/rsync.out

My problem is, the destination drive seems to have more space used than the source. I have 186gb free on the source, and 179gb free on the destination. My friend says this is probably "windows related." My concern is, why is this happening? I'm using the --delete function to make sure files that are missing from the source are removed on the destination. Has anyone run into this before? My data is very sensitive, and important, so I'm concerned about this. Can anyone provide insight? Thank you in advance! Great community here!

[Parkcomm]

Have you had a look - maybe using https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?df(1) to see which directories are different
Are they formatted the same way / and partitioned the same way?

[Truder]

They both use the same filesystem and are factory default partitions, just some iomega external hard drives same make and model. Thank you for this reference, as far as I understand, all I'll need to do is use the df command?

[Parkcomm]

df gives a drill down on the freedisk space used, so run it on both disks and look for differences - but I've changed my mind (or I was dumb, take your pick)

A better approach is to use "du"

run:

Code: Select all

df -h /
du -d 1 -h /

on both disks and look for differences - df will show free space and du will show used space

If you find a discrepancy in two directories you can drill down by running the du command on that directory.

(and a trap for young players - compare the outputs of the same command on each disk, do not compare the outputs of du to df, they never match)