On Sun, 2008-12-07 at 16:04 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: > William L. Maltby wrote: > ><snip> > > Am I missing something? Just old fashioned? Cpio has all the params you > > want and can be _very_ fast with the righ parameters. Similar to the > > above dump/restore set I've seen many use tar/untar equivalents. > > Or, on everything that has gnu cp (which would be at least every linux > distro), 'cp -a . /mnt' should work. However, I usually use rsync > since you can stop and restart keeping the completed work or repeat to > get updates, and it works the same over ssh if the drive in question is > on a different machine. 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 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. -- Bill