I backup my laptop to a Fedora desktop daily using rsync with hard links. This has worked great for almost a year.

I recently purchased a new computer, transferred over my data, and would like to continue backing up this computer daily.

However, due to the data transfer from the old laptop to the new laptop, the timestamps have obviously changed, and will thus cause my daily rsync backup to re-transfer all of the data.

I thought that by adding the -c (checksum) switch to my rsync backup it would match files based on checksum, instead of timestamp and size, and only transfer those files that are different or not present. This appeared to work, but upon examining the new backup, hard links are not being created, and it appears the files that should be hard linked are simply being copied to the new backup directory from the previous backup directory on the backup server. This is very peculiar behavior to me, and I am having trouble figuring out why this is occurring. Checksums match for files that I think should be hard linked.

I have looked through the rsync man page and Google'd around a bit and have been unable to find anything for me to better understand this behavior.