1 TB data copy

[Bill Moran]

In response to "Monah Baki" <mbaki at whywire.net>:

> Hi all,
> 
> We have a windows 2003 server and 1 freebsd 6.2 server. The 2003 server
> supports USB 1 while the freebsd supports usb 2.
> We went and purchased an external 1 TB usb 2 harddrive.
> Our objective is to copy 700GB worth of data from the windows to the freebsd
> server then take the external harddive to a remote client who runs windows
> 2003 and then copy the data back to the windows server.
> The throughput of copying the data from windows to the usb attached to it
> was ridiculous, more than 12 hours to copy 60GB of data.
> I tried copying a 1GB file from windows to the usb attached to the freebsd
> and it took less than 5 minutes, but ofcourse when I tried to mount the
> usb back to the windows box I could not see the 1GB file that I copied.
> How can use the freebsd as the destination copy since it has a much better
> throughput and at the same time have the windows box see the 600GB file
> that was copied once I attach the usb harddrive to it.

I expect the filesystem is the problem.  Windows doesn't understand UFS.

FAT has been the traditional solution to this, since just about every OS
understands FAT, but I don't believe FAT will support files as large
as you're working with.

I'm not completely up to speed with FreeBSD's NTFS support.  Last I looked
at it, it was experimental and there were warnings everywhere.  I assume
it's improved since then (~3 years ago) but can't say with authority.
However, I think that's your only option.  Luckily, since you're just
using the USB drive to move a file, and can keep it safe in another
location until you're sure it transferred safely, this shouldn't be too
risky.

I would format the drive with the Windows machine and make it NTFS, then
work with the FreeBSD mount options to get FreeBSD to mount it.  Have a
look at mount_ntfs.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com