Mysterious disk space issue with rsync

Question

I'm not getting what's wrong with rsync about disk space.

I just bought a new external usb disk of 2TB.

I want to backup my home directory wich is in a dedicated partion on my local disk and made 69GB.

After few minutes of copy the rsync command was blocking on file in my .cache/ dir and when I press Ctrl+C I get No space left on device (28) error. Then I exclude my .cache/ directory and try with some options, and even with sudo :

sudo rsync -avh  --progress -T /media/nixmind/ADC4-6BD7/sync_dir --delay-updates --exclude '.cache/'  /home/nixmind /media/nixmind/ADC4-6BD7

but it continues blocking in .config/ as you can see in the attached picture :

And I still have the same disk space error when I press Ctrl+C (this is just an extract, there are several lines like this):

rsync: mkstemp "/media/nixmind/ADC4-6BD7/sync_dir/http_www-beta.tekken-card-tournament.com_0.localstorage.M1sEZ3" failed: No space left on device (28)
rsync: mkstemp "/media/nixmind/ADC4-6BD7/sync_dir/http_www-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com_0.localstorage.0z54PO" failed: No space left on device (28)
rsync: mkstemp "/media/nixmind/ADC4-6BD7/sync_dir/http_www-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com_0.localstorage-journal.aCTwHz" failed: No space left on device (28)
rsync: [receiver] write error: Broken pipe (32)
rsync error: received SIGINT, SIGTERM, or SIGHUP (code 20) at io.c(513) [receiver=3.1.2]
rsync: [sender] write error: Broken pipe (32)
█▓▒░nixmind@mountain-view░▒▓██▓▒░ Sun Nov 26 03:39:04am
/home/nixmind> 

Here is my file system disk space usage :

█▓▒░nixmind@mountain-view░▒▓██▓▒░ Sun Nov 26 03:41:29am
/home/nixmind> df -HP
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            4.2G     0  4.2G   0% /dev
tmpfs           828M   11M  818M   2% /run
/dev/sda2        97G  7.6G   84G   9% /
tmpfs           4.2G  145M  4.0G   4% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.3M  4.1k  5.3M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           4.2G     0  4.2G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda3       148G   69G   72G  50% /home
/dev/sda5        15G   46M   14G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda4        99G  1.2G   93G   2% /var
/dev/sda1       2.0G  136k  2.0G   1% /boot/efi
/dev/loop0       88M   88M     0 100% /snap/core/3247
/dev/loop2       81M   81M     0 100% /snap/remmina/248
/dev/loop1       88M   88M     0 100% /snap/core/3017
/dev/loop3       88M   88M     0 100% /snap/core/3440
tmpfs           828M   58k  828M   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb        2.0T   14G  2.0T   1% /media/nixmind/ADC4-6BD7
█▓▒░nixmind@mountain-view░▒▓██▓▒░ Sun Nov 26 03:41:29am
/home/nixmind>

My inode usage :

█▓▒░nixmind@mountain-view░▒▓██▓▒░ Sun Nov 26 03:42:35am
/home/nixmind> df -Hi
Filesystem     Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
udev             1.1M   482  1.1M    1% /dev
tmpfs            1.1M   791  1.1M    1% /run
/dev/sda2        6.0M  323k  5.7M    6% /
tmpfs            1.1M   127  1.1M    1% /dev/shm
tmpfs            1.1M     3  1.1M    1% /run/lock
tmpfs            1.1M    15  1.1M    1% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda3        9.2M  439k  8.8M    5% /home
/dev/sda5        916k    46  916k    1% /tmp
/dev/sda4        6.2M   12k  6.1M    1% /var
/dev/sda1           0     0     0     - /boot/efi
/dev/loop0        14k   14k     0  100% /snap/core/3247
/dev/loop2        23k   23k     0  100% /snap/remmina/248
/dev/loop1        14k   14k     0  100% /snap/core/3017
/dev/loop3        14k   14k     0  100% /snap/core/3440
tmpfs            1.1M    39  1.1M    1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb            0     0     0     - /media/nixmind/ADC4-6BD7
█▓▒░nixmind@mountain-view░▒▓██▓▒░ Sun Nov 26 03:42:35am
/home/nixmind> 

I searched everywhere, I don't understand this behavior and don't why.

Answer 1

Are you uaing fat16 or fat32 file system on external drive? They don't support file size larger than 2gb. If so, please format the external drive with ext3 or ext4 and try once again.