RSYNC: File size in destination is larger than source – Sparse Files

You may notice that after running rsync your file size in destination becomes larger than the source. This is most likely due to sparse files. To allow rsync to manage sparser files more efficiently so they took less space use the -S flag.

rsync -S sparse-file /home/sparser-file

After rsync is done, check the destination file with the du command and the filesize will be almost the same as the source file.