Take the tour ×  So I was going to back up my home folder by
copying it to an external drive as follows:  sudo cp -r
/home/my_home /media/backup/my_home  With the result that all
folders on the external drives are now owned by root:root. How
can I have cp keep the ownership and permissions from the
original?  share|improve this question man cp would be a good
starting point. –  Wojtek Rzepala Jul 20 '12 at 16:07 add
comment  6 Answers  up vote 26 down vote accepted  From cp
manpage:             if possible additional attributes: context,
links, xattr, all share|improve this answer add comment  You can
also use rsync.  sudo rsync -a /home/my_home/
/media/backup/my_home/  From the rsync manpage:   -a, --archive
omission).    The   only  exception  to  the  above  equivalence
is  when                Note that -a does not preserve
hardlinks, because finding  multiply-linked               files
is expensive.  You must separately specify -H.  See this
question for a comparison between cp and rsync: h