Sparse files are nice to use to store virtual machine’s virtual disks but can be a real pain in the ass to backup efficiently, especially over the network. Luckily rsync provides a way to intelligently copy sparse files both locally and over the network. The trick is use --sparse and --inplace options. Let’s say we have a sparse 60 GB qemu virtual disk with only around 7 GB used: $ ls -lh fedora24. …