Hi all,
I did a full restructure of a folder (600Gb) by moving around 500 folders in new sub directories. I expected duplicati to recopy the whole new structure in the next backup but it did not. Looks like it only updated it’s database, is that possible ? I tried a recovery and everything looks ok. But I’m a bit surprised.
Thanks in advance!
Yes, that is “by design” (or at least a side-effect from the design).
Since Duplicati stores all data in a “bag-of-blocks” it does not matter where the data originates on disk. The filelist that is written after each backup is a map that says which files use which blocks.
When you rename, that simply changes the map and does not affect the stored “bag-of-blocks”.
More information in How Backup Works in Duplicati Documentation
If the files were only moved or renamed, Duplicati’s deduplication usually means it won’t need to upload everything again. Running a backup and then checking the logs or storage stats is a good way to confirm everything is being referenced correctly.