Copying Large Files

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mbott001
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Copying Large Files

Post by mbott001 »

I routinely move my Thunderbird email data between Linux Mint and Windows. I use a Hitachi Life Studio external USB HD to accomplish the data transfer, of about 9GB now. I've noticed that when Linux Mint copies the .thunderbird folder to the Hitachi, the progress bar indicates the transfer is completed much sooner than the reality. My assumption is that the progress bar represents the data being copied into a buffer and not the actual transfer of the data to the Hitachi.

Is there a way to address / fix this?

Thanks!

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Mike
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Flemur
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Re: Copying Large Files

Post by Flemur »

mbott001 wrote: Mon Apr 26, 2021 9:44 amIs there a way to address / fix this?
Use a terminal - the transfer is likely to be faster, too.

Since you're doing the same thing each time (?) you could make a script*, and run that; and depending what email files consist of, you might look at rsync to copy differences rather than re-copying the same information.

* Edit: something like this:

Code: Select all

cp -ax /from /to ; sync
sync makes sure the files are on the device, not just in the buffer, so the gizmo will be safe to remove.
You could also cp -axv so it'll list what it's doing (nice for large files, not so nice for lots of small files).
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Petermint
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Re: Copying Large Files

Post by Petermint »

If the external disk is NTFS, just leave the files in the disk and change your email config to use the external disk. You could also use a shared NTFS partition if you are dual booting.

9 GB is almost no time on a top end USB stick in a USB 3 port. A really reliable brand, say a Sandisk Extreme Pro stick, would be my choice and not need the copies.

rsync will reduce copy time if your email is in lots of little subfolders because it will copy only the changed files.

For people thinking of using your copy example, beware Ext4 to NTFS. When you copy from Windows NTFS to Linux Ext4, every weird file name is valid. The copy the other way can be a problem if you use a file/directory name that is valid in Ext4 but not in NTFS.

Ext4 thinks "File" and "file" are different names while NTFS ignores the capitalisation. NTFS refuses to use more special characters than Ext4.

Linux defaults to about a minute before flushing the file cache to disk. After the copy finishes, you can run the command sync to force an immediate flush to disk.
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Pjotr
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Re: Copying Large Files

Post by Pjotr »

Use lightweight dedicated file manager Double Commander for copying large files (much faster):

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install doublecmd-gtk
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