rsync - Sep 2007 - Recommended way for initial backup before rsync calls

Hi rsync'ers.

What can you recommend to create the initial backup of a
partition before calling rsync
(under Linux, 100 GB, 10M files, only normal files and
some soft links)?

(Using rsync takes too long for this initial copy.)

Here are some candidates:

1. star -copy -no-fsync -p -xdot -C $1 . $2

2. tar -C $1 -cf - . | tar -C $2 -xf -

3. cp -a $1 $2

4. cpio ...

...

Any experiences?

Sven
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On 2007-09-03 16:34 +0200, Sven.Hartrumpf@FernUni-Hagen.de wrote:
> What can you recommend to create the initial backup of a
> partition before calling rsync
> (under Linux, 100 GB, 10M files, only normal files and
> some soft links)?
> 
> (Using rsync takes too long for this initial copy.)
> 
> Here are some candidates:
> 
> 1. star -copy -no-fsync -p -xdot -C $1 . $2
> 
> 2. tar -C $1 -cf - . | tar -C $2 -xf -
> 
> 3. cp -a $1 $2
> 
> 4. cpio ...
cp, cpio and tar all work for me, assuming no hard links, no ACL
and no EA. Didn't try star.

Beware of cps that don't know what to do with device files. That
was long ago on a rescue floppy (Tom's Root Boot, IIRC) but maybe
still something to watch out for.

-- 
Andr? Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/>
Do not use this account for regular correspondence.
See the URL above for contact information.

On 9/3/07, Sven.Hartrumpf@fernuni-hagen.de
<Sven.Hartrumpf@fernuni-hagen.de> wrote:
> What can you recommend to create the initial backup of a
> partition before calling rsync
> (under Linux, 100 GB, 10M files, only normal files and
> some soft links)?
If you're copying an entire partition, another option to consider is
copying the partition raw using dd.
> (Using rsync takes too long for this initial copy.)
I would be surprised if another tool were significantly faster than
rsync.  If that is the case, it might be worth trying to understand
why so that rsync can be improved.  Are you using the current CVS
rsync with incremental recursion (which is critical when you're
transferring such a large number of files)?

Matt