copying large files

[stanislavche]

Am trying to recover camcorder video files from a SATA drive. Can see them with Knoppix and wat to transfer to an external drive .. How can I transfer large files (approx 24 meg).

Am new to Knoppix/Linux so if there is suggested reading on this topic would appreciate reference.

thanks

[Harry Kuhman]

24 meg is hardly large, particularly for video. 24 gig is large, did you mean 24 gig?

The important thing about transferring files with Knoppix is that it is not safe to write to NTFS. So you should write to a FAT formatted device, not an NTFS formatted drive. This presents no problem if you really have 24 meg of data, even a small flash drive should work. If you have 24 gig of data, particularly any one file over the FAT file limit size, then you can't use Knoppix to safely transfer them.

I do my data recovery with Knoppix by transferring files to another computer on a network, and saving them there. Since that other computer is what is actually writing the files, and it can be a Windows box, it can safely write to NTFS just fine. I use Knoppix a an FTP client and install an FTP server on the receiving system, but that is only one of any number of ways to make the transfer.

Obviously you'll need a version of Knoppix that is new enough to know about SATA drives. However, I've been very disappointed with 6.x versions, and I would suggest that you might have less problems with one of the 5.x versions of Koppix.

[stanislavche]

OOOps. Yes...I meant 24 G. These are video files from a camcorder. I was trying to copy from a SATA drive to a FAT drive. According to your message I should be transferring file from one computer to another, so I guess I should learn how to set up file sharing. Did not realize the FAT restriction.

I greatly appreciate your prompt response. Thank you.

[stanislavche]

Well, I retrieved my files with two computers, but my appetite for Knoppix is whetted. I decided to take your advice and looked for version 1.1 and downloaded it, but have not tried to use it yet.

I did some web browsing and saw reference to using version 5.1.1 to write directly to ntfs drives. I don't want to embark in dangerous territory so wonder what your comments would be.

After reading about that I went back to my browser and checked the Univ of Wisconsin mirror and it seems that I downloaded 5.1.1!!!


I don't want even to test it for writing to NTFS if you think it not advisable. Too many other things to do

thanks for your help

[OErjan]

I would no risk writing to NTFS with any drive I want to keep content of, as last resort I have used it, but almost always with a system that was dead otherwise.