Linux file copy benchmark cp vs cpio vs tar vs rsync
July 19th, 2010
There are many commands to copy a directory in Linux. The difference between them in current Linux distribution are very small. All of them support link, time, ownership and sparse.
I tested them to copy a Linux kernel source tree. Each command I tested twice and keep the lower result.
The original directory size is 639660032 bytes. All methods generate exact same size of 675446784 bytes without sparse option.
| Non Sparse | Sparse | |
|---|---|---|
| rsync | rsync -a src /tmp | rsync -a -S src /tmp |
| cpio | find src -depth|cpio -pdm /tmp | find src -depth|cpio -pdm –sparse /tmp |
| cp | cp -a –sparse=never src /tmp | cp -a –sparse=always src /tmp |
| tar | tar -c src|tar -x -C /tmp | tar -c -S src|tar -x -C /tmp |
Time used and destination size:
Concolusion:
For non sparse copy, rsync is the fastest. For sparse copy, rsync and cpio have the best space efficiency, but slow.
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