A back up question again :P

Which is the best/most preferable method for me to move around 70GB of data (that sport hundreds of thousand of tiny files, like WHDLoad collections and more) to an external USB hard drive?
Which software (or command) will perform the copy, without resulting to corrupted files and to which filesystem I should format my external drive first?
Keep in mind that the copy will take place from a PMAC 3.1 Sawtooth (USB 1.1.) to a PMAC G5.

Is there any other option if I want to move the files from an old setup to a newer machine (i.e. connect them via network and make the copy this way or something)?

[ Edited by Cool_amigaN 17.06.2015 - 10:31 ]

I usually just "Show all files" --> drag and drop in Ambient into an FAT32 formatted USB HDD. I have not experienced any problems yet

USB1.1? Gee. 12Mbits/s. 70GB of data will require a serious amount of time for copying. Roughly 14h if the copy max out the speed of the USB link which is imo, doublful.

If you have some external PATA to USB2.0 interface at hand, this will shorten seriously the time for copying the data.

And for copying, I would go for a shell command line. Something like:

Code:

Quote:

Are you not loosing flags on files while copying to FAT32?

What I would do is to take some 3,5 PATA HDD, format to SFS (or PFS3), move all the stuff. When G5 will arrive, just connect it instead CD, copy all stuff and reconnect the CD.


[ Edited by pampers 17.06.2015 - 20:10 ]

You can use RAWDISK
You copy 70GB on a single file (hardfile) to second disk (NTFS or exFat)

You can use RAWDISK
You copy 70GB on a single file (hardfile) to second disk (NTFS or exFat)

I would open the machines and put a spare internal SFS formatted HD there to copy the stuff, or move the original HD from G4 to G5 (or vice versa) and copy the stuff then to the target HD directly. It'll be MUCH faster and more reliable than using USB. For copying just the standard Copy command from the Shell like Tcheko suggested, but you might want to add the QUIET option with that many files. In any case the CLONE option is important to preserve all attributes and dates.

Copying to FAT formatted device _may_ work if you only copy WHDLoad stuff or other data files which don't use any special protection bits, but it's better to use Amiga formatted filesystems all the way to be sure everything will be cloned.

After copying I'd at least check the directory sizes that they all match with the original that copy has been successful and complete. If you're paranoid, you can also check the binary integrity with Rival for example.

Edit: and BTW you can also copy your system files etc if you have spent lots of time to configure it. It'll work very likely on your new machine too, and you may only need to tune few settings like network, screenmode etc. At least I've spread my main installation from Peg1 to Mac mini, Powerbook, and PMac :P


[ Edited by jPV 18.06.2015 - 09:06 ]

@pampers

Wait, the DVD bus type on the G5 is ATA, similar to the G4?
Aren't both the HDs and the DVD, SATA on the G5? If not that would help me a lot!
But are you sure that it will recognize the newly attached IDE drive from the G4 in order to start the copy? Will it boot normally from the SSD as it configured right now and MorphOS will automatically recognize it?

@jPV

The QUIET option needs to be placed at the end of the command?
i.e. COPY source: destination: CLONE ALL QUIET

@all

1. Which Amiga FS would you recommend if I have to format an external drive connected via USB?

2. If I house the internal IDE HD from the G4, as is, to an external IDE case and then connect it via USB on another MorphOS system, will MorphOS recognize it? Because, in general, I need to have a removable back up of my files somewhere.
Too much effort has been put to gather that much software over the years! :P

> The QUIET option needs to be placed at the end of the command?
> i.e. COPY source: destination: CLONE ALL QUIET

No. Normal AmigaDOS rules apply, of course.

Quote:

I guess SFS is the easiest by being the default fs on MorphOS. It's been working fine for me for USB HDs and USB memory sticks too. But I guess any other would work too. I've also used 68k SFS to be able to use them on both real Amigas and MorphOS, but if it's purely for MorphOS backuping, I'd recommend to use MorphOS native SFS.

Quote:

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. But pay attention if you have device/volume names with same names on both systems, that you copy to correct paths. Or rename the partitions beforehand to avoid any confusion...


[ Edited by jPV 18.06.2015 - 13:24 ]

Just to add my 50 cents:


Instead of copy I would use MirrorCopy for the backup. It works quite the same, but only copies changes, so the seconds backup is done in far less time than making a compete backup everytime.