Without having tested this, a good guestimate. The hard links should be copied as the entire file, since a hard link is just a pointer to the inode of the original file. Since it is a pointer to an inode hard links are filesystem structure dependent. The inode dependence is also the reason you can not hard link across filsystems. Hope this answers that question. To copy all the data I would do something like: tar cfp - /path/to/files | (cd /path/to/where/you/want/files; tar xvfp -) -T -----Original Message----- From: redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ashley M. Kirchner Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 2:06 PM To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list Subject: Moving hardlinks I have a backup drive that I'm trying to replace with a larger one and I need to transfer what's on it now to the new drive. The data was backed up using RSYNC, and some of the data's hardlinked (through cp -al) and I'd like to preserve all of that. Do I simply run 'cp -aR <source> <dest>' and hope for the best? I mean, will the hardlinks transfer over, and will the timestamps will be the same? The current structure is: daily.05 daily.04 daily.03 daily.02 <-- this is a 'cp -al' version of daily.01 daily.01 <-- data gets RSYNCed in here And every night that structure gets pushed up (.05 deleted, .02 to .04 shifted up, .02 gets created by cp -al .01, and then rsync runs on .01) I need this structure, and the linking, to stay as is when I transfer the data from one drive to the other. -- W | I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on tape somewhere. +-------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley M. Kirchner <mailto:ashley@xxxxxxxxxx> . 303.442.6410 x130 IT Director / SysAdmin / WebSmith . 800.441.3873 x130 Photo Craft Laboratories, Inc. . 3550 Arapahoe Ave. #6 http://www.pcraft.com ..... . . . Boulder, CO 80303, U.S.A. -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list