Linux – Favorite rsync tips and tricks

I would use rsync as it means that if it is interrupted for any reason, then you can restart it easily with very little cost. And being rsync, it can even restart part way through a large file. As others mention, it can exclude files easily. The simplest way to preserve most things is to use the -a flag – ‘archive.’ So:

rsync -a source dest

Although UID/GID and symlinks are preserved by -a (see -lpgo), your question implies you might want a full copy of the filesystem information; and -a doesn't include hard-links, extended attributes, or ACLs (on Linux) or the above nor resource forks (on OS X.) Thus, for a robust copy of a filesystem, you'll need to include those flags:

rsync -aHAX source dest # Linux
rsync -aHE source dest  # OS X

The default cp will start again, though the -u flag will "copy only when the SOURCE file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing". And the -a (archive) flag will be recursive, not recopy files if you have to restart and preserve permissions. So:

cp -au source dest

If you really want to use rsync, it sounds like you'll need some combination of --backup, --backup-dir, and --suffix. The closest I think you could get is with something like this

rsync -abv --suffix R1 --remove-source-files src/ dst/

This would do close to what you want, but it would not rename the files exactly the way you'd want. The --suffix option appends text to the end of an existing file, but it only does this for the first conflict. If you ran it again, it would just overwrite your first backup. You'd have to change that suffix value each time the command ran, which would work if you used something with a timestamp, such as this:

rsync -abv --suffix `date +%Y%m%d%k%M%S` --remove-source-files src/ dst/

I'm not sure if this is overkill for what you're after, but it should meet your requirements.