That doesn't follow. If backups are for multiple machines to a big file server, the backup machine will have a much larger set of files than those that come fro

That doesn't follow. If backups are for multiple machines to a big file server, the backup machine will have a much larger set of files than those that come from an individual machine. Further, each backup "image" compares the directory for the previous backup to the current live system. Generally it looks something like this: 1. Initial backup or "full backup" - copy the full targeted filesystem to the time indexed directory of the backup machine. 2. Sequential backups: a. on the backup machine, create a directory for the new time, create a mirror directory structure of the previous time. b. hard link the files in the new structure to those in the previous backup (which may be links themselves, back to the last full backup. c. rsync the files to the new backup directory. Anything that needs to be transfered results in rsync transfering the file to a new directory, the moving it into the proper place. This unlinks the filename from the previous version and replaces it with the full version. So yeah, the result of this system over a few machines and a long-timeframe backup system is way more links on the backup machine than any iteration of the backup will ever actually use.