Moving thousands of files

So,

I'm trying move around 60GB of stuff from an external USB drive to my new MBP. This includes 4GB VMware images, thousands of tiny files, etc.

From the finder, I select the USB drive, then the source folder, right click, and choose "copy". Then I navigate to the documents directory and choose "paste". The finder says "preparing to copy 583 files" (not the exact number) and I walk away for an hour.

I come back, and nothing has changed. I "force quit" the finder. What am I doing wrong? What is the better way to move thousands of files?

Thanks,

Robert

Drag then folder to the destination

Although, I will admit, if the source folder contains loads of very small files, it does take ages - one of the few complaints I have about os X

I agree.
I would open 2 finder windows, the destination and source. I wouldn't do them one at a time though. I would select all files to copy and do it at once. If there are a couple files that you don't want to move I would still select all files then command click the files you don't want to transfer. This will leave all the files you want selected and deselect the ones you don't. Then just drag 'em over.

This would be one of those situations where UNIX, and Terminal would be your friend. Yes, it's a bit archaic, and yes, it's a bit advanced, but here is how I would tackle this kind of problem.

Assume you have your internal drive labelled 'Son of iSaac' (which I do.) It would be 'mounted' as "/Volumes/Son of iSaac". Also assume your external drive is connected via USB and is labelled 'iSaac' (which I also do.) It would be also mounted as "/Volumes/iSaac". On 'iSaac' you have a folder called 'Punk Music' which you want copied over to 'Son of iSaac' in your Music folder. Here's the magic incantations:

Once Terminal.app is opened

('$' is the prompt at the bash shell command line)

$ cd "/Volumes/iSaac"
$ tar cf - "Punk Music" | (cd "/Volumes/Son of iSaac/Music" | tar xpfB -)

What this essentially does is invokes 'tar' which is an ancient UNIX {t}ape {ar}chive utility to pack up everything from the folder that you gave as that first argument, and stream it out to standard output (that's the '-' bit.) Then using a pipe (the '|' bit) you are invoking tar to unpack that stream to where you changed directory to on the other side of the pipe. That's the 'x' (extract) 'p' (retain permissions) 'f' (use the following arg as the file) 'B' (You are reading a stream of stdout, so be a bit more patient) '-' (read from standard input.)

It's a little black magic, but it will work and is what I use when I need to shuffle huge amounts of data around my system, and is a great example of why UNIX has been an awesome system for more than 30 years.

I would have rep'ed you for that one walkerj, but I have before

walkerj said:

It's a little black magic, but it will work and is what I use when I need to shuffle huge amounts of data around my system

Click to expand...

This worked well. It never would have occurred to me that I could create and move a tarball in one stroke. Much appreciated.

Robert