Only show changed files while syncing from ext4 to NTFS

You could try using --omit-dir-times switch to ignore directory times (take a look at rsync man page).

I personally find that using -c switch is the best way to ensure that only the files whose contents has been changed show up in the output.

Note that using -c will slow down rsync.

Instead of changing the mount type you can also tell rsync to ignore file permissions when copying to a filesystem that doesn't support it. The following command works for me.

From the rsync man page:

In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the source permissions, use --perms. To give new files the destination-default permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure that the --perms option is off and use --chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get enabled). If you’d care to make this latter behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as putting this line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines the -Z option, and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination dir):

rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX

don't use -a, it contain -p -o -g.

Looks like it was a permission issue. Not sure why .. But I've edited /etc/fstab for NTFS partitions and it now works as expected, ie no printing of directories that haven't been modified.

Old fstab entry: ntfs-3g users,defaults,exec,uid=1000 0 0

New fstab entry: ntfs-3g users,defaults,exec,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=077,fmask=137 0 0

Im guessing (who knows ..) dmask=077 did the trick ie 'drwx---' instead of 'drwxrwx'.