I'm surprised this important question has run for so long. Is it in a Linux FAQ? Anyhow, here's my contribution ( hopefully this'll wrap it up ;-> ): cd /; find . -path ./mnt -prune -o print | cpio -pdxm /mnt This copies the whole disk to the mount point /mnt, avoiding the recursive traversal and preserving device files, links and modification times. Casper Boden-Cummins.