On Fri, December 10, 2010 9:41 am, Sean Dague wrote: > On 12/10/2010 08:44 AM, Sean Phelan wrote: >> John, >> >> Assuming you can only have 4 HD's in at once: >> >> 1) usb connect the 2TB and partition off 250 GB >> 2) copy the 80GB to the 250GB partition >> 3) remove the 80GB drive and install the 2TB drive >> >> 4+ ... Proceed as you might have. >> >> I'd be daunted by the prospect copying 1 TB over usb. Is that a naive >> reaction? > > I'm always wary as well. It will also take longer over USB.
"Longer" is a galactic understatement. The time to copy 1 TB of data over USB is likely to be counted in days rather than hours. USB is fine for relatively slow or infrequent data transfers like daily use, but for large transfers it drives me bonkers. If you have a second computer with a SATA or IDE interface available, copying the data from the native interface and then over a 1 Gbit network (or probably even 100 Mbit) would be a lot faster. Heck, if necessary you could completely pull the drives out of a spare box, add the drive you want to copy, and boot the spare box up with a Knoppix disk and copy the data over the network via rsync that way. So even if you want to do this "on the cheap" there is usually a faster way of transferring that much data rather than suffering with USB. >> Also, off your original method ... Rsync instead of copy? I'd expect >> something to hiccup while doing this much copying. It always hiccups for >> me :) > > Yes, rsync is your friend, I never use cp any more :) I assumed John meant "copy" figuratively, i.e. "copy the data using some method" rather than actually meaning using the 'cp' command -- because I think we can all easily agree that using 'rsync' (or a similar tool that does some data integrity checking) for transferring large amounts of data you need to rely on is a good idea. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jan 5 - Building a Community Site with Drupal Feb 2 - Zimbra Mar 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell
