copying large files between filesystems

[Jonathan Rawle]

Phil Schaffner wrote:

> If you can read the directory in place, you may be able to extract to
> the new target location (at least up to the 2GB limit if not beyond)
> without moving the archive.
> 
> (e.g. "tar jxvf archive_name.tar.bz -C /new/filesystem/location")

The only thing is, tar.bz2 archives are compressed after the tar archive is
complete. This allows for redundancy between files to be used, but isn't
good for backup purposes.
You might be able to recover some of the archive, but it might be
considerably less than 2GB. For backups, I suggest using uncompressed tar,
or a utility such as dar, which compresses before archiving  (zip does
that, but can't handle large archives).

In any case, the moral is to test such backups before wiping your original
home directory!

Jonathan