Backup a external drive?

[darsparx]

Ok, i'll admit it, I'm cheap. I need to backup my external hard drive(which has my iTunes library and parallels vm on it) before wiping to backup and wiping my computer to reinstall OS X again. Is there any tool that can be used on windows 7 to back it up(the copy/paste or cut/paste doesn't work with how big it is which is close to 200 gb)?

[Ziggy]

So there's ~200GB worth of stuff on the drive and you're trying to copy and paste it all in one shot? Why not just copy and paste chunks of it until you get it all?

[Anapan]

Download and burn "ultimate boot CD"
Use Norton Ghost to make a 1:1 raw partition/drive file (.gho)
Should something go wrong, you can explore and extract files off of it, but this will be able to be restored to the drive without disturbing anything. It's like making a .ISO of a CD or DVD.
Read the documentation before use of course. This has worked for me many times, but I've always used it on a PC, booting off the disc. Maybe you can use a friend's PC to use and store the data temporarily?
I don't know of a windows utility that's this reliable for any partition type, tho wait for more responses.
There's a windows version of Norton Ghost - it may be as good or better tho I've never used it. PM me if you want to try it - I have the installer. Make sure you run everything with the right-click -> run as administrator.

[Ivo]

Anapan: Is Norton Ghost free, and does it work solidly? I used to use a clone tool called Macrium Reflect, but one time I did need to use the backup to restore things it didn't work out and I was glad I also had a separate copy of my data files (but I did need to re-install the OS and programs).


OP:

It the external drive only has documents and data but no installed OS or programs, I think the easiest thing is to copy everything. I don't remember any upper limit of 200GB on copy and paste, maybe your issue is you don't have enough free space on the target drive?

If you don't want to do it manually and want to be able to resume in case you cancel in the middle, there is a free Windows program developed by Microsoft which I use to keep volumes or folders in sync, called SyncToy. When you first run it on a pair of folders, it compares them (your target will, of course, be empty when you start) and then it copies / replaces only what has changed since the last time you ran it on that folder pair.

It is quite simple to use.

[Anapan]

Definitely free if it was on the ubcd compilaton. The documentation is extensive for it, and the usage is made very clear but I stick to oldschool when it comes to low level stuff. OP asked for windows 7 compatable.

[bmoc]

Is the destination drive formatted with fat32? That would put a 4GB limit on the size of a single file. Your VM is likely larger than 4GB.

[isiolia]

Ok, i'll admit it, I'm cheap. I need to backup my external hard drive(which has my iTunes library and parallels vm on it) before wiping to backup and wiping my computer to reinstall OS X again. Is there any tool that can be used on windows 7 to back it up(the copy/paste or cut/paste doesn't work with how big it is which is close to 200 gb)?

To make sure I'm understanding you right...you want to back up your external drive to (presumably) a Windows 7 machine, so that you can then turn around and wipe the external, and use it to back up your Mac's internal drive?


You can likely drag and drop, though with that much stuff I'd probably use robocopy, which is generally a command line tool (there's a GUI for it, but I don't use it). It was originally part of the server toolkit, but it's been a standard inclusion on Windows since Vista.

So for example, if your external was drive E:

>robocopy e:\ c:\external_backup /E /R:1 /W:1 /log:c:\robocopy.txt

What that'd do is copy drive E: to the specified folder on C: /E will copy the full directory structure, R:1 means that if a file fails to copy it'll only retry once, and W:1 means it'll only wait a second before retrying. You want to specify those, since by default it'll retry like a million times, waiting 30 seconds in between.

Specifying a logfile means that it'll pipe the output to that instead of flashing by, useful if it does wind up failing to copy some files.


Like bmoc said though, you may need to be aware of the particular format that the drives are in. Without additional software, Windows won't read HFS+, and OS X will only open NTFS in read-only. FAT32, as he mentioned, only handles files up to 4GB, though errors you might run into due to that won't usually be helpful.

[Ivo]

Will robocopy skip over files that haven't been changed the last time it was used? If not, for regular backups I would still stick with SyncToy; and even for a one time copy that is so large you may want to interrupt it and resume at a later date, SyncToy would do that without copying a 2nd time the files it already did before.

[isiolia]

Will robocopy skip over files that haven't been changed the last time it was used? If not, for regular backups I would still stick with SyncToy; and even for a one time copy that is so large you may want to interrupt it and resume at a later date, SyncToy would do that without copying a 2nd time the files it already did before.

It will, yeah. It has a ton of options, I just gave a very basic command to copy everything. Using /MIR instead of /E would remove folders that are no longer in the source location as well. You've got additional flags to copy files in backup mode or use volume shadow copy for ones that are in use.

SyncToy is good too though.

[darsparx]

Well his may seem stupid now, but I ended up buying a new external drive to back up what I could off the computer when they went into it through the server environment I may see what else i need before giving it to them fully next time I'm up at the store(extended warranty on a mac...so worth it). Apparently the hard drive failed and on my own account since I can use the account i created for my mom and don't try to move big files...