Copying/cloning Which would be better for a 6tb external HDD?

[Inhuman Infatuation]

I've amassed many titles since i've been using steam, enough to fill up a 6tb hdd. I'm wanting to move them to a 10tb or something larger, as titles are growing larger and even dlc is taking chunks of 60+gb (Xcom 2, unsure if that 65gb war of the chosen is actual size)

Anyway, i'm not sure if just plugging in the two externals through 3.0 and just copy them or should I ise Amoie or Macrium to clone the drive to drive? I don't think i've managed a large HDD before, but i'm sure many of you have (i'm sure this is common in survelience or video editing as well so it's got to be safe)

Anyway, any suggestions on which is better? the external is slightly fragmented, 2% or so, but I could just copy to fill all the little dead spots, while still being fragmented, or I could clone it fragments and all. I'm just trying to figure out which is safer as I don't have an internal HDD to copy 6tb worth of data onto.

Thanks for any input! And yes i've bough alotta crap haha

[meheezen]

so, you want to copy files from one disk to another large one...

im not sure about the cloning, dont they copy the whole partition? not sure this is what you want.

if i were tasked with that, i'd plug both drives in and use rsync/synctoy to make a reliable copy of the files

[Inhuman Infatuation]

Origineel geplaatst door meheezen:

so, you want to copy files from one disk to another large one...

im not sure about the cloning, dont they copy the whole partition? not sure this is what you want.

if i were tasked with that, i'd plug both drives in and use rsync/synctoy to make a reliable copy of the files

Basically im just curious about how you would even manage space this large. I went ahead and downloaded my entire library and didn't think it would even touch a 6tb external (should have used the 8tb SATA...)

But anyway, one of the drives is 2.0 so I'll probably have to get a 3.0, but I'm wanting to just copy as it's a 10tb. Would it be better to just clone the drive (plug into the USB and just clone) or is copying the better way? I don't want any fragmented data or corruption

I'll heck our rsync

[meheezen]

USB 2.0 is quite slow for today's standards. It might even take a full day or more just to read that much data. Can you plug it directly into your computer or into a USB 3.0 or newer enclosure?

rsync is a *nix tool used to reliably transfer data, quite comonly used in the enterprize for copying backups to another location, as it checks if the destination is properly written and has options to resume the copy if it were interrupted for whatever reason, it checksums all files and copies only the ones that dont match or were modified. SyncToy was a windows implementation of that tool that was part of the powertools package, i think you can download it standalone these days.

as for cloning, i'm not familiar with current tools for file-based clonining/copying. The cloning tool i use is clonezilla, but that works on partition level and im not sure thats what you want as both source and distination disks will have the same partition information (UUID) and windows will complain when you plug both drives in saying you already have a drive plugged in with that UUID (you can still force mounting tho)

you can aways defragment your disk later (assuming you are using a filesystem that supports that), so dont worry about that. Also, when dealing with disks with that size, it might be worth to consider a larger block size when formatting it.

[Inhuman Infatuation]

Origineel geplaatst door meheezen:

USB 2.0 is quite slow for today's standards. It might even take a full day or more just to read that much data. Can you plug it directly into your computer or into a USB 3.0 or newer enclosure?

rsync is a *nix tool used to reliably transfer data, quite comonly used in the enterprize for copying backups to another location, as it checks if the destination is properly written and has options to resume the copy if it were interrupted for whatever reason, it checksums all files and copies only the ones that dont match or were modified. SyncToy was a windows implementation of that tool that was part of the powertools package, i think you can download it standalone these days.

as for cloning, i'm not familiar with current tools for file-based clonining/copying. The cloning tool i use is clonezilla, but that works on partition level and im not sure thats what you want as both source and distination disks will have the same partition information (UUID) and windows will complain when you plug both drives in saying you already have a drive plugged in with that UUID (you can still force mounting tho)

you can aways defragment your disk later (assuming you are using a filesystem that supports that), so dont worry about that. Also, when dealing with disks with that size, it might be worth to consider a larger block size when formatting it.

I've partitioned out certain blocks for certain things, I use Aomie, so i've got all that down, but i'm checking this program out for sure, sounds like what i'd need. I can clone using Amoie and even to a partition, but I think i'd just like to get an external to play the games from, as it works great even on 2.0. No loading or slowdown problems.

But not at this time; the drive is a cheaper external but it's at the 100gb limit, so it's a bit too full for the platter. It should be fine but i'd like to just copy everything. The problem is i''m stuck on 10mbs connection so downloading that many titles just ain't gonna happen. I downloaded these in my prior location when I was sitting on gig net, but since it's already downloaded, if it takes a week it's still faster than running it downloaded sadly.

Thank you for the info! I just wondered about corruption of this file size; i'll likely be buying a new pc later and then running it through 3.0 at least, but no the drive has no sata ports :(. That's where my problem is. Suppose i'll do it blocks at a time until i'm done and play off the 6tb for now. No rush to buy more titles. I mean damn, 6tb...but FF takes up 100gb, so that's nuts. Fills up fast

Synctoy it is; simple and easy. I'll report on this topic at some point and tell the horror story of how long it took hahaha