Linux on USB stick to transfer data between EXT4 drives on Windows PC

Calibos · 26-11-2015 05:18AM #1

I've got two old DLink DNS323 Nas devices. I'm running ALt-F firmware on them which is linux based and the drives are formatted EXT4. I was going to give them a few more months lease of life till I build a Software Raid server next year. ie. adding a pair of 3TB drives and swapping the largest current drive over to the second NAS which will mean I'll end up with a 3TB+3TB and a 2TB+2TB pair of Nas.

Problem is, it'll take about 4 or 5 days to transfer all the content on the old drives as these feckin things are dog slow. ie. The drive to drive copies are almost as slow as network transfers and will max out at 9MB/s. The rest of the family will go nuts if the NAS's are down for that long.

I was wondering if it would be possible with no Linux knowledge for me to install some Linux variant on a USB stick and boot off that on my Windows PC with the EXT4 formatted drives connected to the spare Sata ports and copy the content from the old drives to the new drives that way instead.

If it involves any command line malarkey I can count myself out though. Goes totally over my head.IS there a Linux equivelent to drag and drop

Johnboy1951 · 26-11-2015 10:22AM

Calibos wrote: »

I've got two old DLink DNS323 Nas devices. I'm running ALt-F firmware on them which is linux based and the drives are formatted EXT4. I was going to give them a few more months lease of life till I build a Software Raid server next year. ie. adding a pair of 3TB drives and swapping the largest current drive over to the second NAS which will mean I'll end up with a 3TB+3TB and a 2TB+2TB pair of Nas.

Problem is, it'll take about 4 or 5 days to transfer all the content on the old drives as these feckin things are dog slow. ie. The drive to drive copies are almost as slow as network transfers and will max out at 9MB/s. The rest of the family will go nuts if the NAS's are down for that long.

I was wondering if it would be possible with no Linux knowledge for me to install some Linux variant on a USB stick and boot off that on my Windows PC with the EXT4 formatted drives connected to the spare Sata ports and copy the content from the old drives to the new drives that way instead.

If it involves any command line malarkey I can count myself out though. Goes totally over my head.IS there a Linux equivelent to drag and drop

Yes you can drag & drop in a file manager ...... even use a dual pane so you can do it more easily in the one window

Yes if you run a Live Linux and attach and mount USB connected drives you can transfer data between the drives quite easily.

Calibos · 26-11-2015 02:14PM

Can I not do it with the spare Sata connections on the mobo? Does it have to be with USB? Means I'd have to buy some usb to sata convertors? I happen to have to go to PC world tomorrow to get a keyboard and mouse combo for my old man and long ethernet cable although it goes against every fibre of my being, but I need these things asap and can't wait for a delivery no matter how much cheaper these things might be online.

Johnboy1951 · 26-11-2015 02:39PM

Calibos wrote: »

Can I not do it with the spare Sata connections on the mobo? Does it have to be with USB? Means I'd have to buy some usb to sata convertors? I happen to have to go to PC world tomorrow to get a keyboard and mouse combo for my old man and long ethernet cable although it goes against every fibre of my being, but I need these things asap and can't wait for a delivery no matter how much cheaper these things might be online.

Yes indeed you can ...... sorry just thought you would not be opening the PC.

Connect the drives .... unplug existing drive/s to make sure there can be no unintended interference with it/them.

Connect the new drives then power up and boot from LiveUSB.

Calibos · 28-11-2015 07:45PM

Just one last question before I proceed with this.

I happened to have to use some windows Cmd prompt commands to insert some Usb3 drivers into a windows install usb stick. There was mounting malarkey going on:D whatever I did meant I couldn't un mount the folder and I can't delete it now and it's taking up gigs of space I'd rather it didn't .

How it's related to the subject of this thread is that I often hear, 'mount this, unmount that' in Linux discussions. Do I have to know all about mounting and unmounting to do what I want to do. Might I end up with these hard drives unable to work in the NAS after I transfer the data because I fcuked up mounting or unmounting from my windows PC or something?

Johnboy1951 · 28-11-2015 11:46PM

Calibos wrote: »

Just one last question before I proceed with this.

I happened to have to use some windows Cmd prompt commands to insert some Usb3 drivers into a windows install usb stick. There was mounting malarkey going on:D whatever I did meant I couldn't un mount the folder and I can't delete it now and it's taking up gigs of space I'd rather it didn't .

How it's related to the subject of this thread is that I often hear, 'mount this, unmount that' in Linux discussions. Do I have to know all about mounting and unmounting to do what I want to do. Might I end up with these hard drives unable to work in the NAS after I transfer the data because I fcuked up mounting or unmounting from my windows PC or something?

For the most part mounting a partition of a HDD in Linux can be achieved through whichever filemanager that distro uses.

It was not uncommon for Windows to require drivers to be installed to provide access to all sorts of relatively common hardware ...... as I do not use Windows these days - well for years - ... I am unsure what the present situation is regarding Windows needs.

Linux OSs generally contain all the drivers you will need for common hardware so that situation does not arise often ..... if at all.

It is unlikely that using Linux to copy the data will have any negative effect, but for the sake of your sanity (:)) it might be prudent to try a test run on some discardable data.
If nothing else it will provide you with assurance that what you are doing is correct.

If your Win HDDs use one of the later MS filesystem formats you might need to install some software in the Live environment to access it ..... but this would depend on the Live distro you use.

Calibos · 29-11-2015 12:26AM

The HDD's both the old that I'm copying data from and the new that I'm copying data to are both formatted with EXT4.

I posted on the replacement 3rd party firmwares google group but its not very busy and sometimes there might be days without any replies from anyone. While researching the methodology of transferring data from old to new HDD's with the NAS's themselves I came across the info that these old underpowered Dlink DNS323's while fine in day to day media streaming duties are dog slow when it comes to moving a lot of data either over a gigabit network or even internally drive to drive. 9MB/s was about the best I could hope for. I posted on the google group to confirm if this was true or if I was misunderstanding something. It was suggested that if I had a friend with a LINUX PC that a way to dramatically speed up the process with minimum of Media streaming down time would be to put both new drives into one of the NAS boxes and run the firmwares disk setup wizard to format them in EXT4 and partition them. Then remove them and insert one along with the EXT4 formatted full old HDD into the friends Linux PC and do the data transfers there.

So all drives old and new are already EXT4 and partitioned before they even get plugged into my PC booted from a Linux Live distro on a stick.

So I definitely won't have to type in any mount/unmount command line type stuff?
It'll be boot with the Live usb stick.
It'll see the two connected old and new HDD's.
Double click in a GUI to see the contents?
Cut & Paste folders?
Come back after 3 or 4 hours?
Shut down PC?
Remove drives and pop them back into the NAS?
Jobs a goodin'??

Just had a horrible thought. Permissions are going to rear their ugly head aren't they?
I've learned that nothing is ever as simple as it seems when it comes to computer stuff

My problem is that I know just enough to get myself in trouble

Johnboy1951 · 29-11-2015 08:03AM

So I definitely won't have to type in any mount/unmount command line type stuff?

There is nothing definite until you try it ...... but with a modern live distro you should not have to use other than GUI to achieve your aim.

It'll be boot with the Live usb stick.
It'll see the two connected old and new HDD's.
Double click in a GUI to see the contents?
Cut & Paste folders?
Come back after 3 or 4 hours?
Shut down PC?
Remove drives and pop them back into the NAS?
Jobs a goodin'??

I suggest you Copy, not Move the contents ... not Cut & Paste ..... but yes Drag & Drop and select to Copy.
You can delete duplicate contents later.

For such a large data size I would be inclined to use a GUI app such as Luckybackup or Grsync or such for the copying of the data.

********

That above is all good for copying the data from one partition to another.

You have the choice of making an exact copy of a complete drive (including partition table etc) and the data on the drive.

That does need a simple command line use of the 'dd' command or the 'dcfldd' command. I prefer the latter because of its real time feedback in the terminal.

Something like this

dcfldd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb or this (no feedback) dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

will overwrite /dev/sdb with /dev/sda.

Getting it wrong would overwrite the data with the blank.

Do you know anyone who is familiar with Linux that might help out? ..... sorta look over you shoulder as you start the process

Calibos · 29-11-2015 09:28AM

No, I'm the only reasonable computer literate person in the household. No one to look over my shoulder with much Windows knowledge never mind Linux knowledge

Worst case scenario I'll be re-ripping Blurays for the next few weeks if something goes wrong

Thanks a million for all your prompt input and advice JohnBoy. wish me Luck!

Johnboy1951 · 29-11-2015 03:57PM

Calibos wrote: »

No, I'm the only reasonable computer literate person in the household. No one to look over my shoulder with much Windows knowledge never mind Linux knowledge

Worst case scenario I'll be re-ripping Blurays for the next few weeks if something goes wrong

Thanks a million for all your prompt input and advice JohnBoy. wish me Luck!

Maybe there is someone on Boards who lives near you and could help

All I can advise is to take care and do not rush things.
If getting flustered walk away .... come on to Boards or other forum and ask

G'luck

Linux on USB stick to transfer data between EXT4 drives on Windows PC

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