Best way to transfer 1TB of files?
January 9, 2025 2:34 AM Subscribe
I have a 1TB external hard drive and I would like to transfer its entire contents to my NAS. What’s the best way to do this? I realize I could just drag the contents over through Windows Explorer but wanted to check if there was a better way.
Drag and drop with Windows Explorer is as quick a method as any, and if you're not already comfortable using command-line tools it's certainly the method offering the lowest risk of inadvertent data loss.
posted by flabdablet at 4:21 AM on January 9
posted by flabdablet at 4:21 AM on January 9
Teracopy is a free utility for Windows that:
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:42 AM on January 9 [4 favorites]
- in case of a copy error will simply skip the problematic file, not terminating the entire transfer
- will wait for network or device reconnection if disconnected
- will let you can skip unnecessary files manually to reduce the transfer time
- after a transfer, will let you easily retry only the failed or skipped files>/li>
- can proactively handle file name conflicts
- in unattended transfers, has a 'Skip All' mode to prevent interruptions
- can also verify file integrity, generate reports and checksum files, and run PowerShell scripts automatically upon completion
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:42 AM on January 9 [4 favorites]
Does the NAS have an USB port you can connect the ext HD to?
posted by nostrada at 4:58 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]
posted by nostrada at 4:58 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]
If that port is USB3, the NAS will probably be able to copy data from an external drive plugged in there onto its internal drives faster than the network will allow. So have a poke around in the NAS's own web control panel, and see if you can find a purely NAS-internal file copier lurking somewhere in there.
posted by flabdablet at 5:30 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 5:30 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Some Synology devices support USB Copy. For that to be helpful, though, you'd need to get your files off your Windows device onto a USB drive, or there needs to be a way for the Windows device to pretend to be a USB drive.
Short of that, I would recommend attaching to your network over ethernet. That will give you access to the drive that is faster than Wifi. I recently did this to restore about 1TB of data from a Synology NAS to a Macintosh. It took a few hours, but that's better than taking a day or more.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:51 AM on January 9
Short of that, I would recommend attaching to your network over ethernet. That will give you access to the drive that is faster than Wifi. I recently did this to restore about 1TB of data from a Synology NAS to a Macintosh. It took a few hours, but that's better than taking a day or more.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:51 AM on January 9
you'd need to get your files off your Windows device onto a USB drive
Question specifies that the drive with the files on it is an external one, so they're almost certainly already on a USB drive.
posted by flabdablet at 6:54 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]
Question specifies that the drive with the files on it is an external one, so they're almost certainly already on a USB drive.
posted by flabdablet at 6:54 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]
On the Synology, you can drag the files over in File Manager
posted by nostrada at 7:11 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]
posted by nostrada at 7:11 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Synology user here, as noted above, I would go with USB copy.
posted by SNACKeR at 7:26 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]
posted by SNACKeR at 7:26 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: USB copy worked great! Thanks all!
posted by NoneOfTheAbove at 3:42 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]
posted by NoneOfTheAbove at 3:42 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]
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posted by funkaspuck at 3:15 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]