2008/12/8 William L. Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com>: > Yep. I've recently began using rsync for several types of "local" copy, > usually back-up related. I can't recall if the "cp -a" detects and > handles hard-links to minimize space requirements though. I know cpio Yes, it seems that "cp -a" is designed just for that kind of job. Might have to add "-x" to limit it to one file system if you are interested. I noticed that, to my surprise, rsync is sometimes faster than a plain scp even when the destination is empty, and as someone else said it's nice to be able to stop/start and redo. > can/does. I guess I'll have to read up on cp some more and see if it > leaves the access times alone (cpio parameter allows retaining that) and > handles hard-links efficiently. I'm not sure why you should care about atime so much - more and more people around (including Linus Torvalds) recommend to get rid of it altogether. Ubunut comes with "relatime" as a default config already. According to Linus, disabling atime updates will give the single largest performance gain (in dozens of percentages, as far as I remember). But back to the question - am I missing something too by not using dump/restore or cpio? dump/restore is so BSD 4/'80's :) Cheers, --Amos