On 07/31/2012 07:05 AM, Smithies, Russell wrote: > Is it possible to do something simple like scp the whole dir in one go so they're duplicates in the first instance, then get rsync to just keep them in sync without an initial transfer? > > Or is there a better way? I use tar and ttcp for an initial transfer: On the receiving end: ttcp -l5120 -r | tar xf - On the transmitter: tar cf - . | ttcp -l5120 -t name-of-receiver Note: The files are transmitted without encryption. I easily get 110 Mbytes/sec. on a gigabit connection. If you need encryption, and your transfer is CPU limited, you should investigate which cipher to use. In my case arcfour128 is the fastest, so I use: rsync --rsh='/usr/bin/ssh -c arcfour128' ... after the initial transfer with ttcp. Mogens -- Mogens Kjaer, mk at lemo.dk http://www.lemo.dk