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I've copied a bunch of large media files to an external hdd connected via USB. When I try to put them back on my notebook hdd (I open nautilus and move the files in F3-mode) I get a lot of hickups and the process can never be finished for any file. Something wrong with the external hdd?

H3R3T1K
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2 Answers2

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As we discussed in the comments, it is still possible to transfer your files to your device with the terminal (instead of the gui), even when there are spaces in the device name. You can either escape it with

/media/Your\ Drive   or /media/"Your Drive"

(If you are on 12.10 the new location is /media/user/YourDrive, so please keep that in mind for the following instructions)

Then use something like rsync or gcp, as both of these have a progress bar and a verbose setting which reports the details of the transfer so you can see if any errors are occuring. As an example, rsync is particularly useful, and the command

rsync -avi --progress /home/mike/bin /media/MCADisc

which will give a detailed report about what is being transferred:

sending incremental file list
cd+++++++++ bin/
>f+++++++++ bin/Times
          74 100%    0.00kB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#1, to-check=17/19)
>f+++++++++ bin/apt_centre
         158 100%   17.14kB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#2, to-check=16/19)

sent 61751462 bytes  received 358 bytes  8233576.00 bytes/sec
total size is 61742705  speedup is 1.00

You could also use gcp if your prefer, which I have discussed here:

Both methods should transfer your files correctly or give you a good idea of what the issue is, as they give much more useful information than when you transfer files with the gui tools.

If you still cannot transfer your files correctly, then I should consider William Bell's ideas to test the filesystem integrity on your disks.

Community
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There could be many reasons

  • The portable is corrupt - try running fsck or scandisk to check it
  • You are plugging a usb2 device into a usb1 port - use external power
  • Try copying from the terminal $ cp -uv /media/thedevice/* .
  • If the device is usb2 avoid using it on a usb3 port - I have issues before with this.
William Bell
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