BC Wiki - File Sync Software

man rsync is your friend!
-a  archive; equals -rlptgoD
-r  recurse into directories
-l  copy symlinks as symlinks
-p  preserve permissions
-t  preserve modification times
-g  preserve group
-o  preserve owner (super-user only!)
-D  preserve device and special files (super-user only!); equals –devices –special

Other good ones to know, especially if you’re syncing to another r/w machine and not just pushing to a read-only backup:
-v  verbose
-L  transform symlink into referent file/dir
-h  human-readable numbers
-u  update; skip files that are newer on the receiver
-c  skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
-P  progress bar; keep partially transferred files; equals –partial –progress

For your purpose, I typically use:
rsync -rLptgoDPhu

If you don’t want to sync symlinked stuff, then:
rsync -aPhu