SCP while TAR is archiving

[undecided09]

I have some very large directories (user images, videos, songs) that need to be transferred to the new host.

TAR seems to take FOREVER!! I've been archiving my user images directory for nearly 12 hours now and the archive is only 8GB out of the 36GB directory. I tried to TAR another directory while it's going but it slowed it to a crawl.

I don't imagine this is possible but can I use SCP while the TAR file is still being filled? I don't think I can do that but it would be great to atleast kill 2 birds with one stone. Any suggestions on speeding things along?

[i92guboj]

Are you using compression? If so, you might want to use 7z, or if you use tar, use gz instead of bz2, it's *much* faster.

I am not sure about your second question.

[lomcevak]

I don't imagine this is possible but can I use SCP while the TAR file is still being filled?

If I understand the question correctly, you want to start copying the tar file while it's still being built. If so, probably not.

I suggest you use a pipe and avoid creating a tar file. The command would look something like this:

cd /path/to/source; tar -czf - .  | ssh host "cd /path/to/dest; tar -xzf -"