Mark: Thanks for this link. http://linuxvm.org/info/howtos/movefs.html
Mostly explains things. I do have a question relating to the tar command therin described: tar -clpSf - . | (cd /mnt ; tar -xpSf - ) How do you get this process to handle symbolic links. In my case I was copying the /var tree and it left out /var/run/printer and /var/run/.nscd_socket which are both symbolic links to elsewhere.