Use drush make to load only modules? I have a dev site with many modules.  I have another dev site on a different server that I'd like to populate with the same modules.  I can zip 'em up and move the file, or use rsync, but I wanted to see if drush-make would do it faster.

I can create only modules without core using: "drush make --no-core makefile.make" within the module directory but this creates the sites/all/modules directory hierarchy.

How can you use drush make to just build the modules in the modules directory without that structure?
If you run drush make --contrib-destination=sites/mysite, then modules will be placed in sites/mysite/modules.  rsync is going to be faster than Drush make. (Edit: This speed comparison presumes roughly equal transfer speeds between the endpoints. I can see how make might be faster if you have a fast connection from the target to d.o, but a slow connection between the source and the target.)

If you want to create a makefile for an existing site, you may use drush generate-makefile, or build a whole installation profile with drush generate-profile.