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Nov 24, 2022 at 19:19 comment added AndrewC are the differences these days mainly between BSD vs GNU?
Oct 24, 2021 at 10:39 comment added Victor Klos Agreed that it is different. Point of this answer is: in many cases you don't need rsync but you can just get the job done with tools that are already installed. In case of hard links and sparse files, cp has options for those too, but those go beyond the requirement of the question which is to just copy a bunch of files from one local drive to another. BTW I have to disagree with the recursive flag being non-standard in the copy command. With diff that is different, which is why the answer states GNU diff.
Oct 24, 2021 at 9:55 comment added Kusalananda Note that by changing from rsync to cp, you are depending on the capabilities of the local cp utility to support the non-standard option -r, and you assume that it will do exactly what rsync would do (on some systems, the -r option would cause symbolic links to be followed, not copied as-is). You also remove the ability to copy hard links and sparse files (again, depending on the cp implementation), which would be done portably using rsync with its -H and --sparse options.
Oct 24, 2021 at 8:33 history edited Victor Klos CC BY-SA 4.0
Added rationale
Oct 23, 2021 at 15:00 comment added Victor Klos It is already installed and quite suitable for a one-time action like OP's "I want to make a fresh new copy of a large number of files from one local drive to another."
Oct 23, 2021 at 11:34 comment added Kusalananda What is the reasoning behind using cp in place of rsync?
Oct 23, 2021 at 10:00 history answered Victor Klos CC BY-SA 4.0