Re: Writing to 2 TB USB hard drive fails
On 02/11/2015 07:28 AM, Rich Hare wrote:
I have been using Debian via the Knoppix bootable CD to back up a couple
of Win XP computers. Has been working wonderfully with a 500 GB drive
I've used
and also a 1 TB drive.
I recently purchased a couple of 2 TB drives for this purpose, but have
a problem. The drives will mount; the backup (70-80 GB) will start, but
terminates without error
message after a few folders are copied; leaving a bad file or two
behind. (Windows reports
the files are bad and can't even delete them). I tried partitioning the
drive into two 1 TB partitions, but this, too, does not work. I've used
a Seagate utility to
check if the drives have 512 byte sectors or 4096 byte sectors and they
are 512 byte NTFS
sector drives.
The drives work well with WinXP.
That sounds like some kind of subtle firmware bug in your 2 TB USB drive.
On 02/11/2015 08:44 AM, Rich Hare wrote:> Rich Hare wrote:
> After booting into Debian, Knoppix allows me to see each drive. I do
> a simple "copy" and "paste" to copy the files from the Windows
> machine to the backup drive.
I prefer using command-line utilities wrapped in batch files/ shell
scripts/ Perl scripts/ etc., so that I get consistent backup's. Cygwin
is very useful for Windows machines:
http://cygwin.org/
I used to struggle with trying to get Linux to write files and
directories on NTFS volumes, and finally gave up. Now if I want to
reliably write to NTFS volumes, I use Windows.
I've had better luck reading and writing FAT32 volumes with both Linux
and Windows. Understand that it is possible to transfer file contents
accurately, but not meta-data due to limitations of FAT32. This can be
a feature or a bug, depending upon what you're trying to do. (If you're
writing an archive instead of files and directories, then data and
meta-data preservation depends upon your tools.)
I've found three ways to do accurate backup/ recovery of NTFS files and
directories:
1. Norton Ghost 2003, going to NTFS volumes. This is how I backup my
Windows system drives. USB drive support is dated, and probably won't
work with your 2 TB drive.
2. A byte-for-byte copy of the raw partition contents using Debian
GNU/Linux and dd, going to ext4 partitions. This is how I backup my
Linux system drives. Knoppix and your 2 TB USB should work.
3. The backup utility that came with the Microsoft operating system
that created the volume. File contents, special files, directories,
meta-data, and most everything else *that is not in use* should be
backed up accurately. This can do full and incremental backup's, and
works well for data volumes (not system volumes). Newer versions can
automate backup runs on a schedule.
HTH,
David
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