Best settings for one way copy, using size only, where cloud destination has a lot of files

[imthenachoman]

I have:

• an encrypted destination setup on Google Drive
• a local source

The local source only has files added to it; files are never modified or deleted. As a result of previous syncs, the destination already has 200k+ files.

I want to do a copy from source to destination the fastest way possible. I know I should use copy and --size-only but I’m wondering if there are other settings I can employee to speed up the copy. For example, I know the default settings might take time to list the files in the destination so I am wondering how to address that.

This is the command I have come up with so far:

rclone -v --size-only --fast-list --skip-links /source encrypted:destination/

Am I missing anything?

[calisro (Rob)]

Looks fine. The defaults are generally good unless you have some reason to change them.

[imthenachoman]

Cool. Thanks! I just want to optimize as much as possible since I’m only doing a one-way copy and don’t care about updating existing files.

[calisro (Rob)]

You can add ignore-exisiting to prevent the files that are already there.

[imthenachoman]

Got it. Thanks. I think I will use --ignore-times too. Files will never be touched after they have been copied and files on the destination will never be touched either.

[ncw (Nick Craig-Wood)]

If your files come in with a sensible modification time, then you could use --min-age 1d which would save some scanning. Though drive is funny about accessing single files so it may not save mucn or any time.

You’d probably want to do a sync without --min-age every now and again too just to make sure.

[imthenachoman]

Thanks. I will have to do a few tests and see what works best.