Need Linux Guru for an Issue I'm having

Setup: 4core amd 2.4 ghz, 12 gig ddr3 ram, debian 6, java 7.
Running a folder called bin in a tmpfs. I'm trying to copy said bin folder to the HD "cp -r bin backup" in a folder named backup. Whenever I do this it copies the folder into more ram bumping my ram usage from 6 gigs to almost 8. Which is the size of the bin folder.

Is something conflicting with the way I want to copy from ram to hd.

I've moved from host to host server to server using rsync and tar. I know this was working before on each of those servers. So what could be different? Maybe from the tar file the bin folder came from?

If there's an easy fix for this like mounting the backup folder or something please help me out we need redundancy.
Thanks in advance.

 

silentdojo,

A tempfs (temporary file system) is stored in ram. Any attempts to cp in the same tmpfs will only increase the amount of ram used. You need to copy the bin folder outside of the root /tmpfs that you are in. I suggest to /home.

If you want to know more about linux file system structure go here:
http://www.linuxconfig.org/Filesystem_Basics

Great linux basics here:
http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/