In short: is it safe to rsync .git/annex/objects/ to other clones?

I'm in the process of migrating a lot of my files to a new backend. Most them still use the old non-file-size-tracking SHA1 backend from when WORM was the default. I have multiple clones that each use about 460 GB of their 500 GB drives.

I've noticed that git-annex creates hardlinks to migrated content in .git/annex/objects, so I'm able to migrate all content despite only having 40 GB of free space. Excellent.

Now I'm planning to rsync -a --hard-links .git/annex/objects/ ${CLONE}/.git/annex/objects/ to recreate the hardlinks and save space on the clones as well. If I fsck afterwards, this should be fine, right?

I've tried this with a test repository and it works but I'd like to be extra sure that I'm not missing something crucial.

The alternatives that I'm aware of are:

• making space first: git annex dropunused "1-20000" and git annex get .
• running git annex migrate in each clone.

I expect rsync to be safer and faster than these alternatives.