Many thanks to everyone that helped and i used good old copy and paste as suggested by schneidz and it worked fine.I realise now what i was doing wrong with rsync.I was treating it like the dd command which is different altogether.The only way to learn is to keep trying.One Question how do all you guys remember the commands in Linux?Thanks a million.I will try and move a file onto a usb stick for practice

Practice mostly. You don't need to remember the syntax for all of the commands, that's what man pages are for, just the names of the commands and what they do (which is often times in the name). There really aren't that many when you get down to it. Compared to English which has over a million different words, the 40-50 different Linux commands that you use most often are pretty easy to pick up.

thats rite... it was a few years back but maybe i misunderstood what the op wanted.heres a good example: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...od-4175484709/

1. Using Linux on an everyday basis - meaning the command line
2. Writing scripts - trying stuff out, writing things to assist you, or experiments
3. Keeping former examples - don't throw stuff away, keep it somewhere regular, but out of the way and refer back to it when needed.
4. Keeping a helper sheet in file or on paper - Write interesting (to you) commands and options for them on a sheet of paper or in a text file and print it/refer to it/etc
5. In short anything you'd commonly do to remember something - eventually the most common stuff will become everyday for you. I'm assuming you can remember cd, and ls; but did you know those before you played with Linux?

As suicidaleggroll also said, there are man pages both on a typical Linux system and also available via the web. A really good thing about man pages further is at the bottom they refer to other commands which are mutually supporting, similar, or otherwise important to the command which you happen to be viewing the manual page of.

My knowledge of linux is I have used opkg ipkg apt get install and ls plus what I have been doing on this thread.i am going to try rsync and I have used dd.I think the hard drive is too big for the dreambox but no better way to learn.Is linux big in America?

Android uses Linux. A lot of the new small boards, Beagle, Raspberry Pi, and a new one recently introduced by Intel all run Linux and Android. The backup and restore applications on many PC's is actually Linux. It's large enough to be noticed. I've been working in Linux for a little over 10 years. The amount of distributions as well as the level of active development on the OS should offer a good example. Further there are large companies which produce Linux for commercial use; whether it be a product to place on other systems or a server they provide. So yes, fairly big, but I really don't assume it's just the US; lots of LQ members are from all over the world.

i think its bigger in south america than in na:
http://news.cnet.com/2009-11397_3-6245409.html

Also, almost every executable allows '--help' as a modifer, which will usually give you enough information to go on, rather than accessing the man page. If it doesn't, then the man page is the way to go. Remembering things is essential, and I don't approach Linux any differently than anything else. I either remember or I don't, and repetition is a big part of remembering things.

You can also scroll down to the bottom of a lot of man pages and at the bottom it will give you a way to access more documentation by telling you to type:

info coreutils `command`