Backup & Recovery (Rsync/Tar/Dd)

Stop worrying if your rsync job actually copied anything

🧩 The Challenge

You finally kicked off that massive multi-terabyte backup and rsync is humming along, but you have no clue if it’s hitting actual data or just spinning its wheels. It’s a massive pain to wait three hours only to find out a bunch of permissions or locks killed the transfer.

💡 The Fix

Just tack on the progress and verbose flags to force rsync to stop being so secretive. It’ll give you a live view of the files as they fly by so you can spot stalls immediately.

rsync -avhP --stats /source/directory/ /destination/directory/

⚙️ Why It Works

Adding the P flag acts as a combo of –progress and –partial, which is a lifesaver if the network drops and you need to resume later without restarting the whole operation from zero. The stats flag is just for your own sanity to see if you actually transferred anything or if everything was already up to date.

🚀 Pro-Tip: Always pipe your output to a log file if you’re running it in a screen or tmux session so you can audit the carnage later.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 10/26/2026