I run: rsync -aWuq --delete-before /home/bmike1/Documents /media/bmike1/RedSanDisk and I get a bunch of errors that say: rsync: mkstemp "/media/bmike1/RedSanDisk/Documents/Education/ Darktable/.darktable-1:7HairEdit2.y4Qitq" failed: Invalid argument (22) in my search for an answer as to "why" I happened upon this . (copied below for your convenience.) Their solution was to change the archive tag (-a) to a recursive (-r) tag. What about the other settings that -a preserves? However, it didn't work for me and I just noticed that what rsync seems to be doing is taking all of the videos I have in the folder "Darktable" and refusing to copy them and in the error message appending the file name with a 6 character string (.y4Qitq in the example shown). Perhaps it is expecting a file type (.mp4 or something) and when it doesn't find it creates it's own. Rsync from linux server to a Windows server as a redundant backup using cwrsync but getting an error for the chown command on the directories being backed up. The issue was simple enough, stop telling rsync to change the owner as the linux command is invalid on the windows server. 1 rsync -atv /directorytobackup/ windowsserver::cwshare changed to 1 rsync -rtv /directorytobackup/ windowsserver::cwshare and all is now quiet from an error message perspective. Thanks to Marcin and Linux Questions Forum for the solution. But I'm going from Linux to a USB drive. -- :-)~MIKE~(-: