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 @skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl

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

    • @gpstarmanOP
      1•1 month ago

      Thanks man.

      replace reddit for tech questions.

      The thing is as of right now most Lemmy users are just tech enthusiasts. We want all sort of people to create a more robust community. I want to Lemmy to fully replace reddit in terms of amount of users, communities, posts and activeness.

      Let’s just give Lemmy some time.

    • @gpstarmanOP
      1•1 month ago

      I already have several files on the drive which I want to copy the snapshots.

      Won’t clonezilla replace everything?

      • @Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
        2•1 month ago

        it will, yes. Which is good if you want to keep everything from from the source drive but bad if you want to keep everything from the destination drive.

    • @gpstarmanOP
      1•1 month 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.

      • Skull giver
        3•1 month ago

        It seems to me like the copy utility you’re using (file manager?) doesn’t maintain soft links/hard links. You may need a command line tool to do the copying that does support it, like rsync, or a different GUI tool (though I admit I don’t know for sure what GUI tools specifically support this).

        • @gpstarmanOP
          2•1 month ago

          Yeah I was using Nemo.

          rsync

          Can you give me some guidance on how to copy using snaps rsync in CLI, please?

          Edit: I just read the article you linked. I’ll try that and let you know

    • @gpstarmanOP
      1•1 month ago

      My snapshot is rsync on ext4.

      Thanks anyways.