Copy files in Linux, avoid the copy if files do exist in destination

Question

I need to copy a /home/user folder from one hard disk to another one. It has 100,000 files and around 10G size.

I use

cp -r /origin /destination

sometimes I get some errors due to broken links, permissions and so on. So I fix the error, and need to start again the copy.

I wonder how could I tell the command "cp", once it tries to copy again, not to copy files again if they exist in the destination folder.

Answer 1

cp -R -u -p /source /destination

Answer 2

Don't us cp. Use rsync instead.

Answer 3

rsync -aq /src /dest

Apart from only copying newer files, it will even only copy the newer parts of files if the file has changed. It's intended for copying over network links where you want to minimise the amount of data - but it also works great locally.

Answer 4

Look up the "-u" option for the cp command.

Answer 5

You should be copying as root to maintain permissions/ownership

# cp -au

Also look at rsync