Franco Pasut Blog

Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Previous article: brief comparison between robocopy and rsync 3. Slow rsync with WebDAV 4. Installing Rclone on Linux: repository or official website? 5. Configuring Rclone 1. Introduction Robocopy: The "Robust File Copy" is a built-in powerhouse for Windows users. It’s the native way to handle massive local transfers or network shares (SMB) while perfectly preserving NTFS permissions. Rsync: The de facto standard for the Unix world (Linux and macOS). It’s famous for its efficiency—instead of re-copying everything, it only syncs the specific parts of a file that have changed. Rclone: Think of Rclone as "Rsync for the Cloud." While the tools above were born for physical disks and local servers, Rclone was built for the API era. It is a true multi-platform "Swiss Army knife" that runs seamlessly on Windows, Linux, macOS, and even FreeBSD. What sets it apart is its incredible versatility: it ...

Table of Contents 1. Copy and Paste: the universal method. 2. A short introduction to the Command Line in MS Windows. 3. Two integrated command-line solutions: xcopy and robocopy. 4. Basic scheme and some options, among many, of the robocopy command. 5. Robocopy and batch procedures. 6. Robocopy and Rsync. 7. FreeFileSync 1. Copy and Paste: the universal method. To transfer files from one folder to another folder we usually use “copy and paste.” The “universal method” is “copy and paste”: we all know how it works and it is certainly simple and straightforward. But is it also the most efficient method? If there were some documents already previously transferred and others to be transferred, it would be necessary to manually select those to be transferred before doing the “copy and paste,” and this operation could be particularly time-consuming. In cases like these, more efficient solutions should be sought. These solutions exist but are somewhat hidden...