[ale] has anyone successfully used RSYNC to....

[Courtney Thomas]

...(1) back up all their filesystems from HD1 to an archive hard drive HD2,

(2) then replaced HD1 with a NEWdrive which was partitioned, labeled and
formatted exactly duplicating the replaced HD1, and then

(3) RSYNCed the archived files on HD2 to the NEWdrive, with the result that:

the NEWdrive was not only without fault, but that the previous 
functionality
of HD1 was exactly duplicated ?

If yes to all 3, would anyone care to share

(1) the RSYNC backup command for HD1 -> HD2
(2) their partition, label and format commands for NEWdrive
(3) the RSYNC restore command for HD2 -> NEWdrive

This is obviously of overwhelming importance to all and if anyone can 
point to a
reliable source, or provide it outright themself, for the above sought 
command
summary, my gratitude would be boundless  :-)

I am aware that rsync, fdisk, e2label and mkfs are all documented commands,
but a successful usage, as herein outlined, is, at least in my case, 
frustrating
days away of trial and error, having already wasting such time in 
pursuit of such
an outcome using 'dump'.

Sincerely,

Courtney