[rdiff-backup-users] Compare file date

[niki.hammler]

Hi,

I have been using rdiff-backup for a few months now and the program
itself is cool. But the real big problem is that I want to backup a 80GB
partition with a few files that are a few GBs large (the largest one is
a 14GB image); but this files do not change. Normally, just a few MBs
are changed or something is added (e.g. a binary which won't change).

I start the backup with cron at 5 o'clock a.m. and backup is finished at
8 o'clock p.m. (!!). The computer is very slow and the backup just takes
too long. I can't accept this any more.

I think, rdiff-backup compares each file with a sum in every backup-run,
else, the backup process could not take 20 hours!


But I would like to keep rdiff-backup.


I think a good way is to just take a look at the modify-times of the
files and only if the filetimes are different, an (incremental) backup
is startet.
This way, the process should not take more that 20 minutes.

I know there couls be situations where this could be lead to a problem
but in my case, it's the /home partition and I don't think there is a
scenario where the content of a file changed and the filetimes not.

I hope you understand what I mean.


Is there any way to tell rdiff-backup to look at filetimes instead of
comparing everyfile everytime?


Thanks a lot in advance,

Niki (http://www.nobaq.net)

PS: 

$ rdiff-backup -V
rdiff-backup 0.13.3

Pentium II 300 Mhz, 200 MB RAM, Debian woody, Kernel 2.6.10 (before,
Kernel 2.4.)