Copy big folder from a NTFS parbreastion to an external HD 7484

On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:55:50 -0800, horacius.rex

The answer depends on how you intend to use the files once they are copied to an external disk? Also, whether you need compatibility among OSs. I find the tools provided with GNU-Linux are sufficient, and when they're not, I fall back to using VMWare.

This is how I use external USB HDs. First, I decide what filesystem to use, and whether I want encryption. I usually use XFS with device-mapper encryption. BTW, usning encryption adds a safety layer to protecting my data from unauthorized use and is not too big of performance hit. This reformat replaces the default filesystems that these drives were preformatted with- they usually are FAT32.

As I said, I use these discs exclusively wiht GNU-Linux, so compatibility is not a big problem for me. I choose XFS because it is the best journalled filesystem, IMO. GNU-Linux has readonly support for NTFS, so you should be able to save your files. Reading them on a disk formatted XFS could be tricky from Windows, though. Also, restoring from GNU-Linux to an NTFS parbreastion is likewise tricky. I have found that virtual computers (VMWare) is the best compatibility layer. The crude diagram attempts to describe this approach, which overcomes both of those problems.

Network (real or virtual network) offer various network shares, shared with Samba, Read-Write can connect to other network shares with mount.cifs, smbclient, etc. + Windows Computer (real or virtual computer) connects to GNU-Linux host over network (writes to USB via share)

-- Douglas Mayne