On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > >> There is no reason that should be true. Copying 20GB out of an LV >> should take exactly the same amount of time as copying 20GB out of a file. > > What about the destination? Wouldn't it likely be harder to find a place to put > the LV copy than space to write a file? Or can you copy back and forth? > > -- I just copy the raw filesystem directly to the remote raw filesystem with dd over ssh. If needed you can dd the entire partition to a file also. With LVMs you can also mirror the LV across multiple LUNs, break the mirror, then move the other LUN to another system.