Question: syncing files where the destination files lack extensions but source ones don't

rlcone rocks!

Trying to move to rclone from my old crappy syncing source and I realize that I’ve been syncing files from Dropbox to GDrive but dropping the file extension for images a long the way. This means that while all my photos on dropbox end in .jpg or .png, the ones on gdrive don’t.

I’d like to have rclone sync over all my existing files, but right now its creating duplicates since technically the files in Dropbox with the .jpg don’t exist on drive…but if it checked for the same filename without the extension there would be there.

Is there a way I can tell rclone to look for a version of the file without the extension in the destination when doing a sync? Didn’t see this in the docs so guessing no but figured I’d ask this group anyway.

rclone is amazing and so glad I found it!

Hmm, I don’t think so, alas.

I’ll tell you what I would do…

I would use rclone mount to mount up your gdrive then use a bit of shell scripting to rename all those files to have the right extensions

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Thanks for this tip!

Solid recommendation. rclone mount is amazing! At least for archiving/media uses not sure why I’d want to use the gdrive/dropbox client anymore…Dropbox’s smart sync seems pretty fancy with “smart” local caching and UI integration but this doesn’t cost $199/month and seems almost as good.

Per your recommendation, I got a python script running now doing the mass-renaming! Using the imghdr python library to identify the correct file extension. After this my rclone copy commands should run well.

Thanks again.

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rclone has --vfs-cache-mode for local caching. Not terribly fancy though and no UI integration :wink: