---
title: "Local Filesystem"
description: "Rclone docs for the local filesystem"
date: "2014-04-26"
---

<i class="fa fa-file"></i> Local Filesystem
-------------------------------------------

Local paths are specified as normal filesystem paths, eg `/path/to/wherever`, so

    rclone sync /home/source /tmp/destination

Will sync `/home/source` to `/tmp/destination`

These can be configured into the config file for consistencies sake,
but it is probably easier not to.

### Modified time ###

Rclone reads and writes the modified time using an accuracy determined by
the OS.  Typically this is 1ns on Linux, 10 ns on Windows and 1 Second
on OS X.

### Filenames ###

Filenames are expected to be encoded in UTF-8 on disk.  This is the
normal case for Windows and OS X.

There is a bit more uncertainty in the Linux world, but new
distributions will have UTF-8 encoded files names. If you are using an
old Linux filesystem with non UTF-8 file names (eg latin1) then you
can use the `convmv` tool to convert the filesystem to UTF-8. This
tool is available in most distributions' package managers.

If an invalid (non-UTF8) filename is read, the invalid characters will
be replaced with the unicode replacement character, '�'.  `rclone`
will emit a debug message in this case (use `-v` to see), eg

```
Local file system at .: Replacing invalid UTF-8 characters in "gro\xdf"
```

### Long paths on Windows ###

Rclone handles long paths automatically, by converting all paths to long
[UNC paths](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx#maxpath)
which allows paths up to 32,767 characters.

This is why you will see that your paths, for instance `c:\files` is
converted to the UNC path `\\?\c:\files` in the output,
and `\\server\share` is converted to `\\?\UNC\server\share`.

However, in rare cases this may cause problems with buggy file
system drivers like [EncFS](https://github.com/ncw/rclone/issues/261).
To disable UNC conversion globally, add this to your `.rclone.conf` file:

```
[local]
nounc = true
```

If you want to selectively disable UNC, you can add it to a separate entry like this:

```
[nounc]
type = local
nounc = true
```
And use rclone like this:

`rclone copy c:\src nounc:z:\dst`

This will use UNC paths on `c:\src` but not on `z:\dst`.
Of course this will cause problems if the absolute path length of a
file exceeds 258 characters on z, so only use this option if you have to.

### Specific options ###

Here are the command line options specific to local storage

#### --copy-links, -L ####

Normally rclone will ignore symlinks or junction points (which behave
like symlinks under Windows).

If you supply this flag then rclone will follow the symlink and copy
the pointed to file or directory.

This flag applies to all commands.

For example, supposing you have a directory structure like this

```
$ tree /tmp/a
/tmp/a
├── b -> ../b
├── expected -> ../expected
├── one
└── two
    └── three
```

Then you can see the difference with and without the flag like this

```
$ rclone ls /tmp/a
        6 one
        6 two/three
```

and

```
$ rclone -L ls /tmp/a
     4174 expected
        6 one
        6 two/three
        6 b/two
        6 b/one
```

#### --local-no-unicode-normalization ####

This flag is deprecated now.  Rclone no longer normalizes unicode file
names, but it compares them with unicode normalization in the sync
routine instead.

#### --one-file-system, -x ####

This tells rclone to stay in the filesystem specified by the root and
not to recurse into different file systems.

For example if you have a directory hierarchy like this

```
root
├── disk1     - disk1 mounted on the root
│   └── file3 - stored on disk1
├── disk2     - disk2 mounted on the root
│   └── file4 - stored on disk12
├── file1     - stored on the root disk
└── file2     - stored on the root disk
```

Using `rclone --one-file-system copy root remote:` will only copy `file1` and `file2`.  Eg

```
$ rclone -q --one-file-system ls root
        0 file1
        0 file2
```

```
$ rclone -q ls root
        0 disk1/file3
        0 disk2/file4
        0 file1
        0 file2
```

**NB** Rclone (like most unix tools such as `du`, `rsync` and `tar`)
treats a bind mount to the same device as being on the same
filesystem.

**NB** This flag is only available on Unix based systems.  On systems
where it isn't supported (eg Windows) it will not appear as an valid
flag.

#### --skip-links ####

This flag disables warning messages on skipped symlinks or junction
points, as you explicitly acknowledge that they should be skipped.