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    Well, that's what I didn't want to do, because it will take a long time... Thanks anyway. Commented Mar 22, 2011 at 17:45
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    Presumably mv is faster because you're on the same filesystem? What if you use cp -l to create hardlinks rather than actually moving the files? Commented Mar 22, 2011 at 20:32
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    You should use cp -a instead of cp -r in order to preserve the file attributes (timestamp, permissions, etc.). Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 7:14
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    For people arriving here late via google, the answer below by @palswim emulates the behavior of mv by creating new hard links to the data and then deleting the old links. Short answer cp -rl source destination && rm -r source. Commented May 31, 2016 at 17:43
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    Always BE CAREFUL when using rm -rf, be sure to specify the folder name at the end and to not use variables if you are in script, you might end up running rm -rf / and this will "kind" break your server. Commented Jul 7, 2021 at 14:24