Hopper hard drive duplication for backup

[riderj]

I like that idea. Do you know if the drive would then function on Dish?

I've been googling that error. Some people claim one of the EHD's is gong bad. Another claimed it was because the target was formatted FAT32 and not ext3. You formatted it using your dish receiver, did you not?

Yes, I read all of that and it is a dead end there. Today I tried another target drive, and in the short experiment I did, it was worse yet.

Somebody mentioned my laptop that I am using – could that really be a problem?

Another unrelated incident: I transferred a recording of the XXI Olymics (2010) from one of my older EHDs to the Hopper3, and now it will not transfer out to any EHD

Tomorrow is another day. I am running short on ideas.

 

[TheKrell]

Another unrelated incident: I transferred a recording of the XXI Olymics (2010) from one of my older EHDs to the Hopper3, and now it will not transfer out to any EHD

I believe programs transferred back to the receiver will wind up being protected such that they cannot be deleted without being unprotected first. That fact may be unrelated as well. Try unprotecting it and see if it transfers then.

 

[Altitudinous]

I like that idea. Do you know if the drive would then function on Dish?

Not sure if this was directed to me. If it was, since Clonezilla clones the drive's formatting and data, one would expect that the new drive would function as did the old one. I haven't tried it on a Dish EHD because I haven't had a reason to do so, but I've used it to clone various hard drives to new hard drives or to SSDs and it just worked.

 

[riderj]

I believe programs transferred back to the receiver will wind up being protected such that they cannot be deleted without being unprotected first. That fact may be unrelated as well. Try unprotecting it and see if it transfers then.

I looked at that. I don’t think that they were protected, but I nonetheless pressed the un-protect button. No dice! They tried to transfer and came back with “transferred, with errors”.
While I was typing this – BREAKING NEWS – they transferred! Strange. I thought I should give it one more try before I officially and publicly declared them orphans. A little good news in DishWorld this morning.

 

[riderj]

Not sure if this was directed to me. If it was, since Clonezilla clones the drive's formatting and data, one would expect that the new drive would function as did the old one.

Yes it was – I am learning how to post quotes.

I hope to get Clonezilla working for me, but my biggest problem is not knowing anything about Linux. I downloaded it yesterday; I am using Mint Cinnamon (because it feels similar to Windows). I tried to load and open the program and am having problems understanding the instructions. I will get back to it today.

 

[Altitudinous]

I think the easiest would be to use Clonezilla Live:

Clonezilla live

Boot a system that has the EHD attached and the destination drive attached with a Clonezilla USB drive, and tell it to clone the source drive to the destination drive.

More info about bootable USB drive creation:

Clonezilla Live on USB

 

[riderj]

I think the easiest would be to use Clonezilla Live:
Boot a system that has the EHD attached and the destination drive attached with a Clonezilla USB drive, and tell it to clone the source drive to the destination drive.

I was able to boot into ClonezillaLive.
The process ended with an error message, and says to look in the .log file for information.
How do I view the file, or copy it so that when the session has ended I can view it. I tried a few commands in terminal, but really don’t know what to do to save it or view it.

 

[Altitudinous]

How do I view the file, or copy it so that when the session has ended I can view it.

The Google yielded this:

Clonezilla / Discussion / Clonezilla live: Log files and how to access them?

sourceforge.net

Did the process go through and appear to copy the sectors of the source disk to the destination disk? What were the last few messages on the screen?

If it were me, and it looked like it copied the disk, I would take the destination disk and plug it into a Hopper and see if it's recognized. Perhaps whatever is in the log file is not of consequence.

My clones using this tool (laptop drives) have gone without issue so I have not had occasion to find and look at that log file that is stored in the RAM disk.

 

[riderj]

My clones using this tool (laptop drives) have gone without issue

I started over. It looks promising. What I did the first time was to accept the option to “repair” the destination drive. Took a shot – probably not the right option.
We are now cloning. At 16% right now. Keeping my fingers crossed!

 

[riderj]

Bad News - got about half of them, then it complained of hard drive errors and quit. Plugged it into the hopper and no dice.
I tried for all I could to find the log file but couldn't. We move on.

 

[bookworm370]

I've kept quite for a while but if you bother to go back and read my posting, you have a corrupted SOURCE file not destination. You'll never to it by mass duplicating.

Copy individual folders using the file manager and when you hit one that errors out you will know which folder is corrupted!

So far you've tried 3 different Linux distros, x hard drives, 4 different commands.
None will work if you have a bad sector on the SOURCE drive!

The only thing that will work is to copy "around" the bad folder and the only way you will find it is to actually try to copy each one separately or in groups!

 

[riderj]

I agree. I was willing to try something that promised ease of use. I will now resort to sheer manpower.
Thank you all for being helpful along the way.
jr

 

[Altitudinous]

Bad News - got about half of them, then it complained of hard drive errors and quit. Plugged it into the hopper and no dice.

You might want to try Clonezilla using the Expert mode, and turn on one more option than those already turned on, and that one is "-rescue".
This option causes it to skip over bad blocks on the source disk and keep going.
You could also turn on "-v" to show verbose information.

 

[riderj]

One thing that I discovered when I then hooked up the EHD to the Hopper – it wanted to format the disk. So I was able to copy 150 of the 300 shows using Clonezilla, but in this instance the disk was not readable in the end. I could see the programs on the disk, just not watch them.
I have expended more time that I should have on this project, and it is going on the back shelf for now.
Again, I thank everyone who chimed in on this.
jr

 

[Jim5506]

Your best bet is to format the drive on the H3, then load and run Linux and copy the files from the disharc folder(s) on the original drive to the new one.

 

[riderj]

Your best bet is to format the drive on the H3, then load and run Linux and copy the files from the disharc folder(s) on the original drive to the new one.

I've been there already. Even though a particular program may play on the Hopper, there is something about that and some other video files (.tsp) on one particular EHD that Linux can't or will not copy. Thanks for your suggestion though.

 

[Foxbat]

Another possibility is SpinRite to attempt a repair of the source EHD. It will be slow using an EHD, I would go into iFixIt mode and pull the drive out of the enclosure, mount it in the PC, and let SpinRite run on Setting 5 for however long it took.

But it sounds like you allowed your Hopper to reformat the Source EHD so it’s a moot point.

 

[riderj]

Another possibility is SpinRite to attempt a repair of the source EHD. It will be slow using an EHD, I would go into iFixIt mode and pull the drive out of the enclosure, mount it in the PC, and let SpinRite run on Setting 5 for however long it took.

But it sounds like you allowed your Hopper to reformat the Source EHD so it’s a moot point.

When I get back to this I will look into SpinRite. Thanks for the hint.