Don't use Copy+Paste on Windows, if you've got a lot of data

Windows never ceases to disappoint me. I've got an external hard drive, on which resides a 60 GB VM, which I need to copy now and then to emulate a snapshot. So far, I used the standard Windows file copy stuff to do that. (Copy, and paste the VM directory.) Ran with about 8-20 MB per second. Or in other words: Took up to two hours. And, worst of all, the procedure isn't reentrant. Interrupting the copying means to restart.

So, tried something different: CygWin's rsync, the swiss army knife for backups, and related stuff. In other words, I am using the command

  rsync -a -r --progress
Runs with 30MB per second (50% faster than native Windows copying). And is reentrant...