Age, Size, and Time Filters
Age, size, and time filters let you shape transfer windows around operational goals such as hot backups, cold archives, and bandwidth limits. This section shows how to combine these filters into deterministic patterns so jobs stay efficient while still matching retention and recovery expectations.
Common Flags
| Flag | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
--min-age | --min-age 24h | Only files older than 24h |
--max-age | --max-age 7d | Only files newer than 7d |
--min-size | --min-size 10M | Skip tiny files |
--max-size | --max-size 5G | Skip very large files |
Flag Deep Dives
Use focused docs for each filter flag:
Example Workflows
recent-files-sync.sh
# sync only the last 3 days of changes
rclone sync /srv/uploads remote-prod:uploads/recent --max-age 72h
archive-large-objects.sh
# copy only large files older than 30 days
rclone copy /srv/media remote-prod:archive/media --min-age 30d --min-size 500M
Decision Table
| Goal | Filter strategy |
|---|---|
| Hot backup window | --max-age |
| Cold archive pipeline | --min-age + --min-size |
| Cost-limited transfer | --max-size and split jobs |
note
Timestamp semantics depend on backend and metadata support. Validate assumptions using a dry run and sample objects.
Common Pitfalls
| Pitfall | Consequence | Prevention |
|---|---|---|
Mixing min and max without testing | Empty transfer set | Validate with --dry-run |
| Assuming local and remote clocks align | Unexpected inclusion/exclusion | Use synchronized server time (NTP) |
| One giant filtered job | Hard to debug | Split into named pipeline jobs |