Migrating Data from C-200

[Sherwood]

Hey gurus,

I recently exhausted my 1.5TB internal drive, and have begun resorting to external storage solutions for my growing C-200 library.

After much reading and consultation, I concluded that a WHS box (upgraded HP EX475) was the best route for me, thanks to the ability to selectively back up, run services, expand, etc. The good deal didn't hurt, either

The problem is this: I've got a full 1.32 TB of data on an ext3-formatted drive, and about 1 TB currently in the WHS and another 1 TB in my desktop. I started an FTP transfer from the C-200 to the WHS, but I might need to do something in the next 340 hours, so that option seems impractical.

I have a thermaltake Blacx 2-bay SATA dock, and enough space to park the data temporarily, but I cannot for the life of me come up with an efficient way to move it. Were the drive formatted in NTFS I could just drop it in the WHS and move everything through the bus, but WHS won't recognize ext3 so far as I know.

Any suggestions aside from "get some popcorn"?

[Dave_D]

If that was my situation I would;

- Install ext2/3 drivers in my WHS
- remove drive from C200 and install in the WHS
- copy over data
- reformat 1.5TB originally on C200 to NTFS
- attach USB stick to C200 for NMT Apps (if needed)
- return drive to C200

[accident]

I don't recommend adding any drivers to the whs, the potential for complete loss is extremely high since theres no real good drivers for a windows2003 server. This is the pain in the neck part of any new storage setup because it just takes time to move everything over.

What most people end up doing is remoting into the whs, running something like filezilla (ftp client) and ftping over all the files.. Since your remoted into the whs you can X out of the session it will remain running and keep going. This way you free up your desktop or laptop if you need to take it to work or with you.. filezilla supports copying only whats different so if anything goes wrong you can restart it any not copy anything twice. ftp is the fastest way to copy from the pch and going direct to the whs will reduce some overhead of going over the network with the same data twice. If you were to start it, you'd finish faster than 300+ hours, but its going to take a good 2-3 days.

The other option but its still going to take a good day to finish up is get your desktop/laptop ext3 support. You can do this by booting into a livecd or you can install ext3 drivers into the computer, then you can move the drive to that computer and copy it faster to the whs. It will take longer if your using your computer then if you leave it alone but you can still use your computer while its happening.

EDITED TO ADD:
There is 1 more alternative but it might take longer to get it setup than just copying it over.. I do run vmware server on my whs with a linux install, you could mount the pch drive via your dock into that os and copy it to the whs that way.. but theres no "heres how to do it" instructions so it might take you a day just to get that going if your not used to linux plus copy time which probably equals how long an ftp copy would have taken if you just started it.

[Sherwood]

Gentlemen,

I really appreciate the suggestions. I decided to take a minor risk and format an external drive I had been using as a time capsule.

I'm taking a risk in deleting my own backups and having an unprotected system for 24 hours, but it seems a better risk than ext2 drivers on the WHS. Hard enough getting SAB, Sickbeard, and couchpotato running on there already.

Thanks for the suggestions -- they got the juices flowing.