Transferring large amount of music files

Tinkering
1

Hello. I apologize in advance if this isn’t the correct category to be posting in.

What is the best way to copy all the files from one external hard drive to another?

I would like to backup all of the music on my 4TB drive (connected via USB to my NUC) to another 4TB external hard drive using my laptop to transfer the data from one drive to the other.

In the past I’ve just copied and pasted all the files from one to the other, but I’ve never transferred 4TB before.

Is there a suggested protocol to transfer all the data as safely as possible?

Thank you in advance!

2

This is probably best in the Tinkering category since it’s not a specific Roon software issue for the Support thread. Anyway, for any of the forum regulars (like me) to help you, we need more info, such as what laptop OS, and how you are accessing your NUC from the laptop.

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Thank you for the reply. Can I move the thread to tinkering or does a mod need to do it?

I’m running Windows 10.

The external drive is disconnected from the NUC and now connected to my laptop and the backup external drive is also connected to the same laptop. In the past I’ve just copied and pasted the files from one to the other.

Is the the most efficient and safe way to transfer 4TB of high resolution music?

Thank you

4

Unfortunately I don’t know anything about Windows, I’m a Mac & Linux guy. I’m sure some Windows user can recommend a good file copying program.

5

No worries. Thank you!

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The speed of the transfer can be greatly affected by the type of drive and USB cable. USB 3 has much faster data transfer than USB 2.

8

For operations like this I use software like Beyond Compare (both macOS and Windows). Gives you control and peace of mind, especially if you want to do it over several sessions, check if the content really is the same/in sync etc.

1 Like
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Thank you. It sounds like Beyond Compare is what I’m looking for.

I’ve typically used the copy > paste method, but have run into problems transferring large amounts of data.

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I’ve moved it over for you.

11

I use FreeFileSync for this sort of bulk copy with Windows. It also does backup and synchronization. Also available for Mac and Linux. Completely free open source.

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many tools are there to do these tasks, for example, you have Allway Sync, Gs Richcopy 360 , SyncBack, and Bvckup 2.
Also, Robocopy is considered but it is not GUI based like the previous tools and it requires a CLI knowledge

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