A new thread for a new topic. The reasons are given in previous posts. Short form: I need a new HDD to back up a failing drive. The failing drive is a Seagate 5TB HDD mounted on an old MacBook Pro. It is formatted as ExFAT. I mount it on my Ubuntu MATE 22.04.5 LTS server via SMB. I can't connect it directly, and I actually store data on it from the Mac.
I don't have sufficient space on my Linux server to copy all the data to it, so I'm faced with adding another drive to my ever-growing collection.
I like the idea of the 14TB external storage, but the USB-C won't fit my Mac OR server, both are USB-A. The NAS is a cool idea, since I don't have to connect it to any machine but just add it to my network. But for my purposes, this would be slow and the 4TB smaller than I need.
Right now, I think the Seagate 5TB USB 3.1 portable is my best bet. Sadly, it's older technology, so the usable life may be limited. What do you think? Any choices you might offer?
You mentioned in the other post that your "server" had 1.5 TB free.
I would leverage that for the less content within your 4.5 TB data and dump the remainder on an external WD 4 TB MyBook which has a USB-3 connector that works with a USB-1/2 socket. Note in this image the USB (regular, not mini) connector profile.
So, yes it will be slow with the latter interface (mine is USB-2 ) but you need to watch when the drive is capable of more than the interface can deliver. In Linux parlance, there is a need for a "quirk" in the grub configuration.
ID-3: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WD My Book 25EE
size: 3.64 TiB type: N/A serial: 57583332443630455559524A rev: 4009
scheme: GPT
I have just recollected that our team routinely duplicated/backed up drives by temporary connecting a backup HD directly to motherboard port. Some external drives can be easily pulled out its compartments.
Next to it, I vague remember that some PC workshops provide HD backup/duplication services...
I have several of these disks and they are a bliss to work with.
(fits in a pocket and no external powersupply needed)
Data throughput is around the 100MB/s mark which is for me quite adequate for my backups. They are quite sturdy, just don't drop them while they're running.
Well, I'm on my way to pick up a WD - Easystore 5TB External USB 3.2 Gen 1 Portable Hard Drive. It's not my first choice, but based on price alone (I get a "member discount") and availability. I may wind up just attaching it to my Mac and doing a drag-n-copy from one to the other, but the Mac has rsync installed, so I may choose to go that route due to the ability to restore if the system crashes. Thoughts?
I'm amazed at how much gets lost in just a few years. I haven't needed to muck around with drives, mount points, smb, credentials and the like for over four years! So, I got my new WD drive and decided while I was moving stuff around, I'd swap computers too, so that the 'routined quit unexpectedly' message wouldn't keep getting in the way. So I replaced my MacBook Pro (2012) running Catalina with a MacBook Air (2015) running Ventura. The MBA has only 4GB RAM and about 90GB free on its 128GB SSD, but since I intend to use it only as "middleware," the only issue may be lack of memory.
I have both the old and new drives now mounted, but the WD as shipped came with NTFS, and that's not my choice, so I reformatted it as ExFAT, same as the old drive. Yeah, it's older stuff, but it's been working, so I will only look at "modernizing" after I've gotten everything settled.
rsync exists on the Mac (version 2.6.9 - it's old) but it appears to be functional. The plot thickens, as I ran
and the dry run showed me 4442144174499 (~4.3TB). More interesting, however is that rysnc threw
"error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at /System/Volumes/Data/SWE/macOS/buildroots/.../rsync/main.c(996) [sender=2.6.9]
The "sender" is obviously rsync v.2.6.9 but the error 23 is new. A brief search shows what I suspected: rsync has encountered a file it can only partially transfer, due (most likely) to corruption.
I'm about to launch the process without the --dry-run parameter and see what happens.
Maybe install the latest good build of rsync, 3.4.1, from the point of origin, not the distro repository, nor the manufacturer pre-installed.
That later version could have a fix for the issue encountered.
(5 hours later)
Maybe an examination of the files that are problematic would reveal something about the nature of the problem, which could then provide specific hints for search strings for problem-specific solutions. Just a thought!
I'm afraid I'm stuck with the version on the box; The OS is older and I don't have the disk space to download and install XCode (which would be needed to build from source). Unless there's a binary pre-built for Ventura...
The results of the previous command were a mixed bag. The process finished very quickly after throwing a few errors, but then the copy passed over most of the files and folders.
However, a Finder copy (drag and drop) seems to work well. The corrupted files are identified, letting me erase them from the source disk. I also remembered that I've used FreeFileSync before to great effect! A Linux version is available but I haven't tried it, yet. Still, it's worth a look (downloads as a .tar.gz).
A number of other unrelated (?) issues have cropped up. Most of them are reminders why I replaced an older computer with a newer one. The little MBA I'm now using has only a 128GB hard drive, and reports only 127Mb of free space. Since I don't have any data and only a handful of non-Apple utilities, I'm trying to clear out some space just to get about 10% free. It's a good thing I'm retired and have lots of time on my hands!
) but you need to watch when the drive is capable of more than the interface can deliver. In Linux parlance, there is a need for a "quirk" in the grub configuration.
