If I remember right, you added the --delete-before option because you were backing up to a flash drive and without deleting deleted files prior to starting the copy you were running out of space causing your backup to fail.

The only real difference that you will see between delete-before and delete-during is where rsync has to do a complete read through the whole file structure.  If you are using delete-before, rsync HAS to read through the whole file structure so that it can determine which files to delete before it starts it's copy.  If you use --delete-during, which I believe is the default, rsync CAN, depending on other options, start copying right away.  That can be a huge time saver.  On some of the systems I backup were are so any files that it can take a half hour before the copy even starts if rsync can't start copying immediately.
My guess would be that on your system with a single user being backed up that using --delete-before doesn't cause much more than a few seconds extra to pass before the copy starts.
If you're no longer using a flash drive to backup and have plenty of space now, you might as well take the --delete-before off and leave rsync to it's default behavior.

Brian Cluff

On 02/02/2016 05:59 AM, Michael wrote:

I run this command:

rsync -aWuq --delete-before /home/bmike1/Documents /media/bmike1/RedSanDisk

I was wondering about the --delete-before and was thinking it should be
--delete-during and was hoping to get all of your opinions on the matter.
--
:-)~MIKE~(-:

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