Copying USB Drive data to NAS

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Copying USB Drive data to NAS

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  1. macOS
Hi Guys,

I have a Mac mini server, with a thunderbolt storage drive directly connected to it.
This drive contains approx 2.5 Tb of data, and is mounted to the mini as a share.
This share is live data, that’s accessed most of the time.
I plan to copy this data to an external USB HD and then plug that into the new NAS.
Then I’ll copy the USB HD content to the NAS using USB Copy, in it’s “mirror copy" mode.
Then, over the weekend before we move to the new NAS permanently, I want to run another copy from the mac attached storage to the USB drive. Then I want to plug the USB into the NAS again and simply mirror any changes to the new Synology NAS.

I’ve read about the fact that USB Copy will do this task, but then other users say that it misses out files sometimes during the second mirror copy.
Some other posts suggest that the second mirror copy with USB Copy doesn’t just copy the changed files but actually copies all the files again!
This is all worrying me.
Can anyone put my mind at rest about using the planned method please?

I also have a couple of Buffalo Terastation NAS's on the network - each of these has approx 5 Tb of data.
We want to move all this data to the new NAS too.
I’m going to copy from each of the terastations to the external USB drive in turn, and then copy all that data to the new Synology as well.
The idea of (using USB Copy again from the USB HD) to get this data into the NAS is also planned for this data transfer.
This data isn’t “live” or regularly used data, so one copy will be sufficient.

So as you can see, lots of data to move, and I’m now becoming a bit concerned about the USB Copy package being the correct way to go.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

thanks.
 
I also have a couple of Buffalo Terastation NAS's on the network - each of these has approx 5 Tb of data.
While I can't comment on the USB Copy package as I do not use it, in the case of NAS to NAS migration, why bother with moving data to the USB drive and then using the USB copy tool to actually move the data?

Why not set up a new NAS and use the NAS to NAS copy (over SMB or NFS) to move the data in a single go?
 
Hi Rusty, Mainly because when I tried a test copy of about 70Gb, it took about 25hours to complete, and I was also concerned about the network overhead affecting other users on the network at the time of copy.
I copied from the Mac Findser, but I also did another copy using a mac application called ChronoSync and that took nearly the same length of time.
I just figured that USB 3 twice would still be faster with no overhead.
Am I wrong?
thanks mate.
 
Fair point on all counts. It does depend how is your network configured and when the transfers are happening, but also what is the actual data sample (number of files, and the actual size).

If we are talking about a large number of small files it will take a long time regardless how fast your network is (taking in consideration the actual drives). So if you are worries about "killing" your network, using an USB device would be a logical step.

I was just wondering the reasons for it, not saying that it is wrong in any case.
 
Hi All,

I may have turned my initial question into a story, by adding too much detail - not sure!

Anyway, has anyone used the built in "USB Copy" package enough to let me know they're confident that it will mirror successfully without missing files during copy? Or should I be looking at another migration application instead?

I'm particularly concerned about posts suggesting that the second mirror copy with USB Copy doesn’t just copy the changed files but actually copies all the files again - does anyone else know if this is true?

Thanks.
 
Anyway, has anyone used the built in "USB Copy" package enough to let me know they're confident that it will mirror successfully without missing files during copy? Or should I be looking at another migration application instead?
I used USB Copy for a short while, and it was reasonable for the minor tasks I assigned to it.

Why not simply create a test folder and populate it with 50 files of varying sizes. Then simulate the various copy circumstances you envision, and see how it performs.
 
Hi Telos, Thanks, and Yes I've done a couple of other test-copies since the large 70Gb one above. These were a real mix of text and photos and other docs - about 6000 files in total and 3Gb, and another slightly bigger. Both seemed correct at the end of the second mirror copy after I'd deleted and duplicated and edited some items. In terms of size and number of files anyway.
So it's probably going to be OK. I have several Tbs to get across though, and I'm jittery about the time I'll waste if it doesn't work out, hence my query.
 
Mainly because when I tried a test copy of about 70Gb, it took about 25hours to complete
I ran into this and it was because I was not using a direct connection. I had actually hooked into the NAS using DDNS so all of my data was going through the LAN through the switch through the LAN to the router out to the internet back to the router back to the LAN back to the switch back to the LAN and back to the NAS.

Once I hardwired direct to the target NAS 70GB of mixed files was off in seconds over a gigabit connection, 70GB being only 560Gb. You might want to reconsider how you have it wired up for purposes of "seeding" the new device and transferring files. You could use one of the two LAN ports on the NAS for that purpose and let the NAS handle the traffic balance. We did that and it worked fine — assuming your existing host NAS has 2-ports. If not, you'd doubtless have to finagle an off-hours scenario to try this idea.

7
 
Thanks 7. I will look at doing this for the Buffalo NAS's, although upon a quick look at them just now, the older Buffalo NASs seem to have a shared Gateway address between their ethernet ports that gets pre-populated. Editing the port for LAN2 changes the settings automatically in LAN1 as well. (These two are not bonded so there must be a setting somewhere causing this.) Thanks for the suggestion though, sounds logical and certainly would help with the NAS transfers.
 
I'd suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner or Chronosync on the Mac to 'push' the data from the Buffalo or directly-connected drives to the SMB share on the Synology NAS. I've used these successfully before to migrate multiple USB/FW drives to a Thunderbolt storage system or NAS. A big benefit of this method is that you can re-run the copy task to capture changed data, and also keep 'versions' of the copy state.
 
I've never had any issues with the Copy task, but I'm only using it on a folder containing 125GB, and working in the reverse direction ie. mirroring a NAS folder to a USB drive.
 

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