@aallan Suddenly I don't feel so bad about duplicating a hard disk in an old unix system via dual serial ports via a script that did base64 encoding of each half of the hdd, reassembling each half on a bsd machine, via null modem cables.

To be fair, the hdd was an mfm or rll drive, unobtainable in the late 90's, no network interface at all. Floppy transfers would have worked, but taken forever; at least the serial ports worked overnight by themselves, for 6-7 days in a row...