[clug] fastest way to copy a fs

[Brett Worth]

I have found on large filesystems with a low churn rate the initial
rsync can take more than 10 times longer to run than the final one even
when the files are small. When using rsync between two filesystems on
the same host I also use the --whole-file option  so there's no
checksumming done at all.  If the times or sizes dont match the whole
file gets copied.  Locally its faster to just do the copy.

On the topic of rsync I saw a mention on this list a few months ago of
something called "rsnapshot".  I've been using it since then on a few
machines and would highly recommend it to anyone doing disk to disk backups.

Regards
Brett Worth