Citing Kerrisk, The Linux Programming Interface:
The O_NOATIME flag is intended for use by indexing and backup
programs. Its use can significantly reduce the amount of disk
activity, because repeated disk seeks back and forth across the
disk are not required to read the contents of a file and to update
the last access time in the file’s i-node[.]
restic used to do this, but the functionality was removed along with the
fadvise call in #670.
greatroar