Question

I’d like to take a large folder (~100GB) and copy it over to another folder. I’d like it to skip any files that exist (not folders) so if /music/index.html does not exist it would still copy even though the /music directory already exists.

I found this, but my shell is saying -u is not a valid argument.

I don’t know how rsync works, so please let me know if that’s a better solution.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Always use rsync for copying files, because It Is Great.

To ignore existing files:

rsync --ignore-existing --recursive /src /dst

Do read the manual and search around for many, many great examples. Especially the combination with ssh makes rsync a great tool for slow and unreliable connections on account of its --partial option. Add --verbose to see which files are being copied. Be sure to check out the plethora of options concerning preservation of permissions, users and timestamps, too.