[conspire] pitfalls of transfers on a usb. memory stick

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> This general method can be improved using a nifty utility called
> pipeviewer (pv):
> http://www.anthonyldechiaro.com/blog/2009/05/14/efficient-file-copying-with-pipeviewer-and-netcat/

Lest the point be lost, I just wanted to say a few words for the
brilliance that is pipeviewer (pv).  

This might be you:  You have to do a shell operation that could take
quite a while, e.g., gzipping a 6 GB logfile,  and you'd like to have
some idea about progress without resorting to horribly overengineered
solutions.  E.g., sending a bunch of files over an ssh channel or a pair
of netcat instances.  You keep looking at your watch, and thinking 'When
is this damned thing going to finish?'  Put pv into the middle of your
command via pipe, and you get 'time elapsed, percentage completed (with
progress bar), current throughput rate, total data transferred, and
ETA'.

Neat!