all you Terminal guru's out there

highcadence · Apr 15th, 2012, 12:31 PM

I wanted to know the best way to copy all the contents of one (1 Tb) USB external drive /dev/disk1s2 to a new (2Tb) (/dev/disk2s2) via terminal.

what's the best set of commands to "cp -rv" everything from /dev/disk1s2/ to /dev/disk2s2 ?

thx for any suggestions

macintosh doctor · Apr 15th, 2012, 12:50 PM

just a question here.. why do not you use drive genious or carbon copy to do a sector copy?

as for commands
How to copy a directory or folder.

highcadence · Apr 15th, 2012, 12:51 PM

i just think its more fun using the terminal :-)

thx

macintosh doctor · Apr 15th, 2012, 01:00 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by highcadence
	i just think its more fun using the terminal :-) thx

well then.. hope you back up before you have your fun

broad · Apr 15th, 2012, 04:34 PM

In the time it took to make this post you could have started the clone using CCC or disk utility haha

WCraig · Apr 15th, 2012, 10:19 PM

I think rsync is the fastest way to duplicate src to dest:

copy with progress bar - rsync | commandlinefu.com

but at least one alternative is suggested...

Craig

WCraig · Apr 15th, 2012, 10:23 PM

Oh, and if you want a more up-to-date version of rsync, MacPorts is a pretty painless way to get it (and many, many other useful tools).

The MacPorts Project -- Home

Craig

Apr 16th, 2012, 12:19 PM

Beware using rsync ... unless you have a lot of rsync experience you can end up with a lot of headache for nothing (hard links, soft links, resource forks, etc). Also if you're not using the proper version(s) of rsync and you're not passing the appropriate command line options you can end up destroying your data. The MacPorts version is ok but Mike Bombich's patches (author of CCC) are probably the best ones out there for rsync and OSX. You can find them here: Bombich.com: Mac OS X and HFS+ enhancements for rsync 3

That said I'll second (third?) the suggestion for using disk image or carbon copy cloner (which is free). BTW, CCC uses rsync in the backend for many of its copying tasks.

biovizier · Apr 17th, 2012, 08:43 PM

For file level copies, I'm partial to 'ditto' myself. It isn't as fast as 'rsync' but at least in the past, was more Mac metadata-friendly.

Also note that for drives containing hard-linked directories (eg. those used with TimeMachine), it will probably be necessary to go with something like 'dd' to do block-level copies.

pm-r · Apr 18th, 2012, 02:23 AM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by mguertin
	Beware using rsync ... unless you have a lot of rsync experience you can end up with a lot of headache for nothing (hard links, soft links, resource forks, etc). Also if you're not using the proper version(s) of rsync and you're not passing the appropriate command line options you can end up destroying your data. The MacPorts version is ok but Mike Bombich's patches (author of CCC) are probably the best ones out there for rsync and OSX. You can find them here: Bombich.com: Mac OS X and HFS+ enhancements for rsync 3 That said I'll second (third?) the suggestion for using or carbon copy cloner (which is free). BTW, CCC uses rsync in the backend for many of its copying tasks.

I'll go with the CCC (and occasionally the Disk Utility disk image) option, but I like and prefer to use Mike's CCC developer's comment:

"If you would rather avoid the following procedure, you can benefit from these enhancements to rsync by downloading Carbon Copy Cloner, which uses rsync for many of its file copying operations."

MUCH more user friendly, customizable if needed and MUCH safer IMHO.