Hello everyone!

I am attempting to copy all my data from my work PC to a backup file server in the office. Now when for some reason when I run the following command on my work PC to copy all my files to my backup server, I am not getting the desired result and I think there is something wrong with my command but I don't know what needs to be changed.

Please keep in mind that this is the 1st time I am running the command so that is why I did not start with Rsync however once a bulk of the files are moved over, then I will simply enable Rsync in Cron to keep the two machines synced.

The command I am running is:

When I run the above command, every home/ directory is being recursivly moved to the destination server as well as mine which is not what I want. When all is said and done, I have the following on my backup server:

/backup/carlwill/home/carlwill

The bold above is redundant recursive directories moved from my command. I simply wanted all data from /home/carlwill/* to be moved into /backup/carlwill/ and nothing more.

What did I do wrong?

you may want to try:
a) on tar creation using /home/carlwill/*

and/or

b) on tar extraction using [ --strip-components | --strip-path ] NUMBER (depending on your version of tar will depend on which option to use -- consult the man page)

This is off the top of my head so if you still have problems let me know and i'll set-up a mock env to test.

The problem is you give the complete path specification to tar. In this case tar will use the complete path to generate the backup, and, of course, to restore it.
The solution is to use a relative path specification.

What do you trying to achieve using "exclude" ? I get lost and I omitted the "exclude" in my tip.

I just wanted to copy all my physical files and folders. I don't want any of the system (hidden) files or folders that are associated with applications installed on my PC. I just want the meat and potatoes backed up.

I will try your command and see how I make out.

Thanks for helping!