Re: [PLUG] Large data transfer

["Isaac Bennetch" <bennetch@gmail.com>]

Greetings,

On 7/28/06, Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net> wrote:
> Preferably,
> though, I prefer not to mess with the existing software/OS as the owner is
> not familiar with anything else.
>
> The simplest way, I suppose is to connect it, as is, via the existing samba
> network.

I tent to agree. While samba may not be fastest (it may be, I just
haven't looked at any benchmarks lately), it's certainly the option
involving the least amount of installing new software or the like. Of
course, if physically dropping one hard drive in the other computer's
case is possible, it's going to be much faster and easier to do[1] and
would be my suggested way of proceeding, if possible.

You could also use FTP, scp, or some similar method, as the Linux box
may also already have those services available.

> Alternatively, I could boot Knoppix and connect via NFS.

Sounds like too much hassle for something that already has SMB available.

> Which is more efficient?

Good question, but when you're talking about transfering 120GB, the
differences are probably small enough that they aren't worth worrying
about.

> Once connected, should I use simply 'cp' or 'rsync'?

Well, you can use rsync --compress to use compression, but on a local
network I'm guessing you'll loose more time to processor overhead than
you'd make up. Rsync's real strength lies in the next time you want to
update a set of files: it only transfers the differences. If, for
example, you're making a copy of your 120GB dataset every Friday but
only change 100MB, rsync only transfers that 100MB of differences
whereas cp would transfer the 120GB every time.

Again, a local copy is going to be the fastest, if you can get both
drives in the same computer you'll beat any network copy. Failing that
I'd look at SCP, [s?]FTP, and SMB in that order.
Hope that helps
~ipb

footnotes:
1- There exist several methods of mounting ext2/3 drives under
Windows. Unfortunately I've lost track of the one I've used before,
but Google has several helpful hits. If the drive is NTFS formatted,
you're probably out of luck for mounting it directly under linux, it
looks like NTFS support under linux is still read-only.
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