Hi to all .

I have a folder that is around 230GB and need to copy it to an external .


Drive that hold's data = NTFS.
External = Fat32.


when i used the CP command it gives me errors due to the name of ther files in that directory. some files names are just strange and contain special charaters such as & % $ _ , as i remember the error was invalid arguments .

i tried to TAR the file but it stoped at 4GB , with an error "File larger than 4GB " ..

how could i do this.

thanks.

Any current version of Linux should have no problem copying from NTFS to any other filesystem. I suspect that the problem is the special characters.

The general rule is to put the filename in quotes, like so:

cp "/path/funn&#filename" /destination/path/ (Depending on what the special characters are, you might need single quotes.)

You can also "escape" special characters. Suppose you had a file named "fred$dog". If you do:
cp fred$dog /dest/path
the shell will attempt to insert the value of the variable named "dog". To prevent that, do:
cp fred\$dog /dest/path

Personally, I would first rename the offending files. That way, you will not continue to have the same issue. Post some actual example of the "strange" filenames.

thank you for the advice . but i tried that.
now check this.

i have a folder named TEST . it has sub-folders and files which are around 400GB or so, you are looking at over 10000 files. i just need to copy the whole folder to an external drive. there should be a way to copy the whole folder .. thankx

well imagine renaming and editing a 1000 files ? that would take so must time .

What??--I suggested several things.
Of course!!----cp -R foldername /destination/

The problem is that this command actually means: "find every individual file and copy it." So---special characters will be an issue.

yea i know , is there any other way to get those files , without running into this problem ?

thanks.

First thing you need to do is get a list of all the filenames with special chars; something like
That'll give you a list of all the filenames (with special chars), which you can redirect to a file.
You then need to decide what amendments you want to make and extend the script to do that for you.

Did I read the target drive is FAT32... does it have a file size limit or was that FAT16 that had like a 4GB file size limit?

thank you very much . But again i wanted something in and out. just like a command that would just copy the whole thing one shot.

thank for the script .

Regards,
MaaS

thank you very much . But again i wanted something in and out. just like a command that would just copy the whole thing one shot.

thank for the script .

Regards,
MaaS

I have another question .

could i use rsync for backup instead of CP ot TAR ? or would it also give errors on special characters or huge files such as 400GB . ???

i run 'dd' when copy a really large partition. then resize it with 'PM', or .....

i tried dd , but dd only copy partitions . dose not copy folder .e.g

dd if=/home/test/data of=/mnt/external ? this wont work .

I think at least two of us have suggested that was not going to work----and explained why.

no need the "ls". its useless and will break on file names with spaces. also no need to call egrep (if using bash)