I have been teaching myself rsync today...

[Richard Dale]

14 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

however, I can't seem to get a straight answer on which command I would use to only copy updated files to the receiving end, instead of copying the entire thing each time.

 

Any gurus here?

 

Would it be --ignore-existing? or -u update?

The whole point of rsync is that it will only copy files which have changed, and it will do that by default. This command will copy a local directory to another machine, only copying files which have changed:
 

$ rsync -va <from dir> <remote user>@<remote address>:<to dir>

[Richard Dale]

5 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

Well, that's not what it's doing here.

I haven’t got a lot to go on to account for your problem. You will need to paste the command you’re using and the output. Is the current time set correctly on both local and remote machines?