Help with moving photos from old external to new external

[DonCarlos]

I am running out of space on my external drive (2TB WD Studio) and that old 2009 drive, is acting quirky. So before it crashes I would like to move the external Photo Library (30,000) pics to a new 4 TB external. None of the original photos reside inside my mac, they are all in the old external.

Since the WD Studio is an FW800 port and the new external is a USB 3.0 input, I would just have them both hooked to my mini and use that as the engine.

But what is the safest and most effective way of doing this?
I am concerned about doing a copy paste, if there is a better method? Or is that it?


Thanks in advance for for any suggestions or information.

Regards

 

[Boyd01]

I would use Carbon Copy Cloner. It's not free, but there's a fully functional 30 day trial which should give you plenty of time: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/how-does-free-30-day-trial-work

And sorry, but you need more than just one drive for your valuable photos. You should have a second one as a backup at a minimum - more would be better. You are taking a big chance by putting everything on just one drive!

 

[Fishrrman]

Agree with everything Boyd said above.

You can use the checkboxes on the lower left in CCC to select what to copy or exclude from copying. Sometimes you have to uncheck a number of items, but it still does the job.

Additional reason to use CCC:
If CCC encounters a "bad file" (corrupted, etc.) during the copy, it DOESN'T QUIT THE JOB (as the finder will do). It makes a note of the bad file, then tries to keep going. At the end, it will give you a list of the problem files that weren't copied.

 

[Boyd01]

It also seems faster than Finder copies. I'm working with video a lot at the moment and often have a couple hundred gigabytes to back up each day. CCC is just great for this. A clone has many advantages because it's an exact duplicate of the original. After about 3 years the 3tb media drive failed on my iTunes server. CCC clones that drive every night, so I was back up and running like nothing had happened within a minute or two.

Personally I would not un-check any of those boxes when you clone your old drive, unless you encounter some problems.Your new disk is bigger than the old one, so I don't see the harm to moving everything. Also, do you have a backup disk for your computer's internal drive? If not, then one or two of those should be on your shopping list. You can make a bootable clone of that with CCC, which would get you back up and running instantly in the event of an internal drive failure.

 

[DonCarlos]

I would use Carbon Copy Cloner. It's not free, but there's a fully functional 30 day trial which should give you plenty of time: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/how-does-free-30-day-trial-work

And sorry, but you need more than just one drive for your valuable photos. You should have a second one as a backup at a minimum - more would be better. You are taking a big chance by putting everything on just one drive!

[doublepost=1507376030][/doublepost]Great info. Thank you. I plan to just keep the currently functioning external as another copy of all the photos, after copying it to a new external.
[doublepost=1507376114][/doublepost]

It also seems faster than Finder copies. I'm working with video a lot at the moment and often have a couple hundred gigabytes to back up each day. CCC is just great for this. A clone has many advantages because it's an exact duplicate of the original. After about 3 years the 3tb media drive failed on my iTunes server. CCC clones that drive every night, so I was back up and running like nothing had happened within a minute or two.

Personally I would not un-check any of those boxes when you clone your old drive, unless you encounter some problems.Your new disk is bigger than the old one, so I don't see the harm to moving everything. Also, do you have a backup disk for your computer's internal drive? If not, then one or two of those should be on your shopping list. You can make a bootable clone of that with CCC, which would get you back up and running instantly in the event of an internal drive failure.

Thank you. I probably will just us the free trial of CCC to clone everything to the new external. Great info. Thanks again.
[doublepost=1507376198][/doublepost]

Agree with everything Boyd said above.

You can use the checkboxes on the lower left in CCC to select what to copy or exclude from copying. Sometimes you have to uncheck a number of items, but it still does the job.

Additional reason to use CCC:
If CCC encounters a "bad file" (corrupted, etc.) during the copy, it DOESN'T QUIT THE JOB (as the finder will do). It makes a note of the bad file, then tries to keep going. At the end, it will give you a list of the problem files that weren't copied.

Thank you. CCC is it then.