I want to copy (not move) my Timeshift Snapshots (Rsync) from my existing drive to another drive. Both drives are ext4. As far as I searched I am not able to find any viable results.

If not possible, just why?

Solved

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-apple-osx-bsd-rsync-copy-hard-links/

TLDR

sudo rsync -az -H --delete --numeric-ids /path/to/timeshift path/to/destination/

Where,

-a : Archive mode (i.e. recurse into directories, and preserve symlinks, file permissions, file modification times, file group, file owner, device files & special files)

-z : Compress file data during the transfer

H : Preserve hard links (i.e. copy hard links as hard links)

--delete : Delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that aren’t on the sending side), but only for the directories that are being synchronized i.e. keep exact replica of your /path/to/timeshift directory.

--numeric-ids : Transfer numeric group and user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them at both ends.

--progress : Show progress during transfer.

--log-file="/var/log/my-rsync-script.log" : Log what rsync command is doing to the /var/log/my-rsync-script.log file.

Thanks to @[email protected]

Original Comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/11611743

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•4 months ago

      Surely just copying the files over should do the job?

      It gives me an error ‘cannot copy special files’. Even when doing as root.

      The article confuses me a bit. But I’ll look into it.

      Thank you.