BackupPC Manual mentions:

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Each file is examined by generating block checksums (default 2K blocks) on the 
receiving side (that's the BackupPC side), sending those checksums to the 
client, where the remote rsync matches those checksums with the corresponding 
file. The matching blocks and new data is sent back, allowing the client file 
to be reassembled. A checksum for the entire file is sent to as an extra check 
the the reconstructed file is correct.

This results in significant disk IO and computation for BackupPC: every file in 
a full backup, or any file with non-matching attributes in an incremental 
backup, needs to be uncompressed, block checksums computed and sent. Then the 
receiving side reassembles the file and has to verify the whole-file checksum. 
Even if the file is identical, prior to 2.1.0, BackupPC had to read and 
uncompress the file twice, once to compute the block checksums and later to 
verify the whole-file checksum.
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Why is it actually necessary to do this checksum checking?

Wouldnt it be enough to find files with non-matching attributes and back them 
up?

I think that in most cases if at least modification time is different then the 
file
should be backed up anyway, no? at least there can be situations where the 
lst modification time of a file is more important than it's contents even (I 
dont 
see how but it is a possibility)

Thanks,
Evren

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