Copying one's home directory to an external hard disk

[Paul Smith]

On Nov 29, 2007 9:52 PM, Aaron Konstam <akonstam at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > >> What is the best way of copying *entirely* one's home directory to an
> > >> external hard disk?
> > >
> > > tar
> > >
> > >
> >
> > I will vote against tar.
> >
> > I used it for a backup some time ago and just this past weekend, I had
> > to recover 4 files.  Due to the size of the tar file, it took ages.  I
> > am talking hours.
> Those must have been really big files. For a file of a few gigs (4 I
> think) it took 20 minutes.
> >
> > With the cost of drives today, I would just use cp -a.  I have not used
> > rsync so I cannot comment on that.

Thanks for all replies.

Paul