home dir to usb

[kitepilot at kitepilot.com]

Betty:
>> stormy at stormy-desktop:~$ sudo dd if=/home/stormy of=/dev/sdc1 bs=1024k
>> dd: reading `/home/stormy': Is a directory

What saved your bacon here is that dd will not read a directory, and it is 
NOT meant for what you want to do. 

My (FREE) advice:
Do NOT ever use sudo (or root privileges) unless you *REALLY KNOW* what you 
are doing. 

You would have destroyed /dev/sdc1 if that had worked (although irrelevant 
in this case).
You will need to "mount" /dev/sdc1 to a directory for rsync or cp to do its 
job. 

cp is a cantankerous "mirror-er", rsync will do better and the syntax is 
pretty similar. 

What you need to do:
sudo mount -text3 /dev/sdc1 /somewhere
rsync -av --progress --delete /home/stormy/ /somewhere
Go get a pizza...   :)
BE CAREFUL with the SLASH (/) at the end of /home/stormy
As it is, it means "copy everything INSIDE /home/stormy to /somewhere"
Without it, it means "copy /home/stormy (the directory) to /somewhere" 

If you need a "taylor made" command you can:
a) send me the information of your partitions and directories or,
b) grant me access to your putter and I'll walk you through.
ET 

PS: Do NOT ever use sudo (or root privileges) unless you *REALLY KNOW* what 
you are doing.
:) 

 

 

Eric Shubert writes: 

> Betty,
> Please use the rsync command as Ed stated.
> rsync (with the -a option in particular) takes care of some "gotchas" 
> that the cp command can sometimes produce if you don't remember how to 
> use it just right. 
> 
> betty wrote:
>> i'm sure i know less than you, the advice was to use dd. is one better 
>> than the other?? i'm willing to use whatever will work to copy my home 
>> dir to the new computer so that all my settings are the same. 
>> 
>> what would be the command for cp?
>> thx
>> betty i 
>> 
>> Eric Cope wrote:
>>> please excuse my ignorance, why would cp -r not work?
>>> Eric 
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 9:33 PM, betty <nicepenguin at webcanine.com 
>>> <mailto:nicepenguin at webcanine.com>> wrote: 
>>>
>>>     I installed the new drive into the new computer. I'm going to transfer
>>>     the home directory to a usb drive and then to the new computer.
>>>     This is the command i tried and the result i got. 
>>>
>>>      stormy at stormy-desktop:~$ sudo dd if=/home/stormy of=/dev/sdc1
>>>     bs=1024k
>>>     [sudo] password for stormy:
>>>     dd: reading `/home/stormy': Is a directory
>>>     0+0 records in
>>>     0+0 records out
>>>     0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.000942499 s, 0.0 kB/s
>>>     stormy at stormy-desktop:~$ 
>>>
>>>     What is wrong there? i am such an idiot on command line stuff. aghhh.
>>>     Thanks.
>>>     betty i. 
>>>
>>>     Joseph Sinclair wrote:
>>>     > First, I'd definitely recommend going with a new SATA drive on
>>>     the new machine.  You'll find everything just works better and the
>>>     added reliability of a newer drive makes for a lot less stress
>>>     (although regular and frequent backups are definitely the best
>>>     peace-of-mind tool).
>>>     >
>>>     > For the data transfer there are 3 simple options:
>>>     > 1) If you have, or can borrow, a large enough USB drive (flash
>>>     or HDD), I'd copy everything (I prefer rsync, but dd is a good
>>>     choice too) to the USB drive, then copy from that to the new computer.
>>>     > 2) Temporarily install the old drive in the new machine on the
>>>     ATA (CDROM) interface (if the new machine has an old-style ATA
>>>     interface for the CD drives), and copy the data from one drive to
>>>     the other (definitely use rsync here).
>>>     > 3) Connect the two machines to an ethernet router/hub and use
>>>     rsync to transfer the files over the ethernet connection.
>>>     >
>>>     > However you end up doing the transfer, I'd definitely recommend
>>>     retaining a separate backup of all of your personal data
>>>     (pictures, documents, music, videos, etc...) as part of the
>>>     process, if at all possible.
>>>     >
>>>     --
>>>     betty i.
>>>     www.webcanine.com <http://www.webcanine.com>
>>>     information for people
>>>     who care for dogs. 
>>>
>>>     ---------------------------------------------------
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>>> 
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Eric Cope
>>> http://cope-et-al.com
>>  
>> 
>  
> 
> -- 
> -Eric 'shubes' 
> 
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