7

I'm copying a large amount of files between disks. There's approximately 16 GB of data. I'd like to see progress information, and even an estimated time of completion from the command line.

Any advice?

bobby
  • 604
  • 4
  • 13

3 Answers3

9

Use rsync --human-readable --progress.

For single files and block devices there's also pv. And if you genuinely need an accurate progress bar, try using tar with pv — something like this:

source=/the/source/directory
target=/the/target/directory
size=$(du -sx "$source")
cd "$source"
find . xdev -depth -not -path ./lost+found -print0 \
    | tar --create --atime-preserve=system --null --files-from=- \
          --format=posix --no-recursion --sparse \
    | pv --size ${size}k \
    | { cd "$target"; \
        tar --extract --overwrite --preserve-permissions --sparse; }

Be warned, however, that GNU tar does not yet support ACLs or extended attributes, so if you are copying filesystems mounted with the "acl" or "xattrs" options, you need to use rsync (with the "--acls" and "--xattrs" options). Personally, I use:

rsync --archive --inplace --hard-links --acls --xattrs --devices --specials \
    --one-file-system --8-bit-output --human-readable --progress /source /target

Also look into whether you want to use the --delete and/or --numeric-ids options.

Teddy
  • 5,204
  • 1
  • 23
  • 27
  • Was posting that. However, be aware that it doesn't provide a reliable "progress over total copy time". However, rsync brings many benefits to this kind of stuff. – alex Jun 09 '10 at 19:21
4

Instead of dd I would suggest pv, e.g.:

% tar -cf - INPUT | pv -rbe -s SIZE | tar -xf - -C DEST
kenorb
  • 6,499
  • 2
  • 46
  • 54
akira
  • 531
  • 2
  • 11
2

Have you tried rsync -P? If you're using dd, e.g. tar -cf - src | dd | (cd dest; tar -xf -) you should be able to use Ctrl-T (SIGINFO) to see your progress.

Gerald Combs
  • 6,441
  • 25
  • 35
  • Linux doesn't even have `SIGINFO`. – Teddy Jun 09 '10 at 19:41
  • When copying with `dd` I send SIGUSR1 to `dd` instead to cause it to print the statistics. A simple `killall -USR1 dd` will do the job. (Which works on Linux, even if, as Teddy points out, Ctrl+T doesn’t work.) – Jeremy Visser Jun 10 '10 at 13:24