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> Also, if you're doing multiple backups of the same data to a filesystem over time, it's worth doing 'cp -al' from the previous backup to the current backup destination, then rsync over the top of that - that way multiple copies of files which haven't changed don't take up any extra space

Isn't that already taken care of by its use of rsync's --link-dst option?

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Depends if the backup's on the same filesystem as the source.

You don't want to hard-link backups to the non-backup copy -- the non-backup files might change, and if it is a change that doesn't remove the file first, it will modify the backups if the backups are hard linked.

Doesn't vim intentionally do this if it edits files that are hard linked? emacs breaks the hard link. I'm not saying either behavior is best, but in this case one might be surprising!

Good call.

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