Copy Overwrite Rules - Size Rule

Hi, is there a way to configure overwrite rules when using the copy function?
I would like to overwrite only if the destination file is smaller than the source file.

I can't seem to find this in the docs.
This is because I am doing archival work and the dates can't be relied upon and I am doing it in batches (rclone copy then delete a batch of files in source)
So there might be a file of 100MB in the 1st batch but if there is a file of 50MB in the 2nd batch, I am afraid that the already uploaded 100MB in the 1st batch will be overwritten with the smaller file.

What is your rclone version (output from rclone version)

rclone v1.56.0

  • os/version: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 2009 (64 bit)
  • os/kernel: 10.0.19043.1237 (x86_64)
  • os/type: windows
  • os/arch: amd64
  • go/version: go1.16.5
  • go/linking: dynamic
  • go/tags: cmount

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

Google Drive and Shared Storage (teams)

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone copy . dest: 

hello and welcome to the forum,

rclone does not have a set of rules.
not sure there is a way to finagle any set of rclone flags.
tho somebody more experienced might know more about that.

i can think of two workarounds

  • write a simple script to compare the size of each source file against the dest, if it exists and apply that rule.
  • use rclone mount and a copy tool designed for local.

What you could do is use --suffix .ID where ID is something you change for each batch.

What this will do is make a backup of any existing files with the ID - you can then search for this ID and sort out the potential duplicates after you've finished all the copies.

See

https://rclone.org/docs/#suffix-suffix

1 Like

Thank you for the solution :slight_smile:
I understand the idea of attaching suffix and later on, find try to correct the duplicates.

Improvement suggestion:
Since there is no mechanism to handle existing/overwrite, I still think it is a good idea to have an option to be able to set the rules; at the very least, alert the user on the console output that which file is affected and what had been done by rclone.
Being able to set a flag to prevent overwrites would also be nice since rclone is overwriting all files in the destination with no options to prevent that right now.

The way I found out about the current overwrite behaviour was when I performed my own tests. Would also be nice if it was included in the documentation.

Thank you again.

Yet another feature request to investigate within ticket

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