So, a while ago I backed up a couple of different Macs to my Linux-based fileserver. As a network Time Machine, each Mac has a separate sparsebundle
file containing all of its information. I've since changed Macs and formatted various drives since then, so the original installations for the backups are no longer available.
I want to back up these sparsebundles to a ReadyNAS, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about it. There's rsync on the main server, but I've heard that rsync can cause all sorts of permissions issues and it doesn't play nicely with hard links.
Another option is using one of the Macs to transfer the sparsebundle files to the server via AFP (either with the Finder or with an application like SuperDuper or Chronosync). How efficient would this be? Does AFP behave like some other sharing protocols and copy the data via the mediator (in this case, Fileserver -> Mac -> ReadyNAS), or does it copy directly from source to final target? What would be the best tool for this?
If all else fails, I read somewhere else that a last ditch attempt would be to simply grab the contents of the Latest
folder out of each sparsebundle, but I'd rather avoid this if at all possible.