I could use some advice!

I need to move (copy) a large quantity of files from one disc to another, the size of the data isn't a problem (around 36Gb) but the fact there are about 1.5million files to handle!

I tried to do a straight copy using cp and a list file names generated by one of our databases but it only managed to copy 51,000 in almost 3Hours.

I did a test using tar, which managed to archive 17Gb on a similar filesytem in about 34 minutes (no compression).

The question is, given the number of files how long approximately will it take to untar the 1.5million files as the killer is going to be file creation time.

FYI the destination disc is a 300Gb SCSI U320 10K

Any help in getting a ball pack time frame would be greatly appreciated.

Are you trying to do this over a network or between 2 disks on the same machine? "I tried to do a straight copy using cp"
must be on the same box then.

If on the same machine it will certainly be faster than over network. Put both disks on the same machine and mount them. 36 GB will take a little while though.

DD will get a whole partition for you
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=366442

Thanks teckk,

Currently opted to use rsync, as a trial showed that even with rsync running at full tilt it didn't have a noticable performance impact as far as our users were concerned.