The power of rsync with hardlink

rsync -aHvz -e ssh /var/src /var/src-hardlinks
remote_id@192.168.1.1:/home/users/foo/

The above would copy the directory "src" and "src-hardlinks" (which holds all the hardlinks) recursively to 1921.68.1.1's folder.

find and cpio to back up hardlinks and archive

It can be used for backup with cpio to maintain the hardlinks, permission and modified timestamp.

find d1 d2 -type f -mtime +${period} | cpio -Bpdmv backup_dir


Archive the data to a single .cpio file.

http://bradthemad.org/tech/notes/cpio_directory.php