copying files

[brettsinger]

i want to copy everything from my old mac to an external drive before i wipe the drive and give the old computer to someone. (I already was able to use Migration Tool to get the old files onto the new MB Pro, this is just a precaution.) So far nothing has worked. I've tried rsyncx, psyncx, carbon copy cloner, and all fail for different reasons. i decided to try cp, but it hung after 20GB of data; the total in my /Users/ folder is about 40GB. any idea how to figure this out? thanks.

 

[r.j.s]

Repair permissions and Repair disk using Disk Utility and try again.

 

[brettsinger]

interesting - a couple of screwy things there. thanks for the tip, i'll see if this works.

 

[brettsinger]

a question: "verify disk permissions" is greyed out on the external drive. does that make sense?

 

[r.j.s]

Is the external formatted as HFS+ (Mac OS Journaled)?

Mine is grayed out too, I think you might have to boot from the OS X DVD and choose Disk Utility from the menu bar.

I'd repair the disk and permissions on both the internal and the external.

 

[brettsinger]

external drive is FAT32, since it goes between windows and mac. (Western Digital MyBook)
Managed to repair perms on the MacHD, will see if that helps. Thanks again.

 

[r.j.s]

If you are going to clone a drive to it, it really needs to be formatted as HFS+

I'd reformat, then try cloning it again.

 

[brettsinger]

OK, point taken.
Can I just copy files to it without reformatting?

 

[r.j.s]

Yes, but you will not be copying the hidden files, so if you are trying to clone the drive, it may not work again.

 

[brettsinger]

OK, thanks. I think I'm going to get a simpletech external drive and use it for backups; I was planning on doing that anyway, so I'll just go for it. Thanks again.

 

[r.j.s]

No problem.