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While my regular backup script was running (using rsync to move files from NFS to external harddrive) we had network problems and I was forced to kill the rsync job in the middle of moving files. Could this have corrupted my files? The job should run again tomorrow and overwrite the current backup, so will those files be good?

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  • Are you talking about the source or the destination files? Why would either of them not be OK? What rsync command were you using? Which options?
    – terdon
    Commented Jul 5, 2013 at 23:41

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Generally rsync will create a copy of the file and then move it into place once the copy is done. It is very unlikely to have corrupted a file. It doesn't alter files it is reading. (Although the operating system may update the last accessed timestamp.)

There is an option to update files in place which could cause corruption (inconsistent data) if it was updating a file. I've only used it to copy log files, and configured it to assume the portion of the file already copied wasn't changed.

It is likely you have only a partial backup, with some files backed up and others not. Re-running rsync should just complete the backup.

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