[mythtv-users] Adding new 1 Terabyte Drive and Moving existing Recordings

Jonny B jon.the.wise.gdrive at gmail.com
Wed Jan 7 04:47:55 UTC 2009


On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Craig Sanders <cas at taz.net.au> wrote:

> mv is the wrong command to use here, in case something goes wrong. when
> moving lots of large files from one file-system to another, it's better
> to copy first, delete later (if moving files around on the same fs, mv
> is better as it is much faster...it doesn't need to move the data, only
> update the directory entries)

Historically, every time I've used mv, it does exactly what you're
stating to do instead. It copies ALL the files in the command (I'm
presuming wildcards have been used) over to the destination, and then,
once complete, removes them from the source location. I always do mv
-v so I can see what it's doing, and you can see it copying the files
and then removing them. This also allows me to troubleshoot if
something may have gone askew.

> instead, use rsync like so:
>
> rsync -a /var/mythtv /mnt/newdrive
>
> or, with verbose output and progress:
>
> rsync -a -v --progress --stats /var/mythtv /mnt/newdrive

I have to agree rsync is still a better method than mv.
Plenty of other people have mentioned why.

> one of the advantages of using rsync rather than mv or cp is that you
> can take as long as you want to finish the job. you can spread it over
> days or weeks even. so if the rsync takes hours and you want to go to
> sleep before it finishes, just do so. when you get up in the morning,
> run rsync again and it will be quick because it only needs to copy the
> new & changed files.

I don't see any reason not to go to sleep while the mv is running...


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