This could be helpful: http://www.mail-archive.com/rsync%40lists.samba.org/msg15341.html But if you have root access and are backing up an entire filesystem, you could remount with noatime option, for example: mount -o remount,noatime /foo rsync -ax /foo/* /bar mount -o remount,atime /foo Regards. Jose Manuel Lara Bauche - bauche@esfm.ipn.mx