Copying all the data from one 4TB external USB drive to another

Tech Talk MacOS
1

On my Mac mini, I have two 4 TB external drives connected via USB.
Source is formatted with NTFS. Destination is formatted with APFS.
My Mac Mini recognizes the NTFS disk but BackBlaze doesn’t.
The NTFS disk contains all the data files from my Windows 11 laptop. I’ve recently switch to a Mac mini and I want to start using BackBlaze for online backups.

Question 1. I’m performing the copy manually in small chunks because when I try to copy/paste too many folders/files at once, I get a -50 system error. A Google search provides many different scenarios for a -50 error. So, I’m living with it. Just curious if anyone has any advice/solutions from.

-50 System error
-50 System error445×142 17.5 KB

Question 2. What’s the best way to compare the contents of each drive when I think I’ve got everything copied over?

Thank you.

2

I keep exercising Grok 3 on challenging problems; here’s what it said . You probably found the same info about your -50 error.

It recommends the indie app ChronoSync for migration efforts. CS understands both file systems. The good news: it should automate all move/verify operations. The bad news: $49 may be pricey for a one-shot operation.

If you had already backed up everything with BackBlaze on your PC, I think I’d try doing a restore that way. It sounds like BackBlaze was not part of your PC operation, so that’s out.

One other suggestion: you can either contact Apple online support for your new iMac or you can book an appointment at a local store for assistance in your data migration. Getting a PC user to convert to macOS is something Apple likes; I’m guessing their techs are pretty well trained in supporting this kind of operation. I haven’t used the Genius Bar (or whatever it’s now called) in a long time, but I have been highly impressed whenever I used telephone support or online chat support with Apple. You pay a lot for that hardware – especially any storage upgrades that you bought. It’s time to get your money’s worth!

Good luck.

3

AI saves the day again.

I still own the laptop, so I could try set up a BackBlaze account on the Windows laptop and transfer the account to the Mac Mini. But I think first I’m going to reformat the destination drive to ExFat. If it’s a permissions thing, that might be easier.

Thanks for your help.

4

I strongly recommend keeping your macOS file system on APFS. IMHO, changing to another FS just to move your files across is the wrong approach. Other than the amount of time involved, upload/download is not a bad strategy. Did you try talking with Apple tech support about the -50 error?

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Haven’t talked to Apple Support yet. I’ll try that first.

6

The Windows drive, at least, with your source information should be in ExFAT mode, I’d keep the destination in Apple’s format.

If you still have the laptop with the data, I’d reformat the NTFS drive to ExFAT and copy the data again.

7

Am I right in thinking that the external 4TB drive you have connected to your Mac is a spinning disc hard drive, not a SSD? If so, I wouldn’t recommend APFS as the format for it. APFS is really intended for solid state media and I’ve found its performance on spinning drives to be poor. Instead, I would recommend using Disk Utility to change the drive’s format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

For more information on the poor performance of APFS on spinning media, have a read of these articles:

2 Likes
8

I will check out your articles, thank you. I’m assuming that the 4TB drives I’m using are solid state. They’re small Passport brand drives I bought at Best Buy.

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If these are Western Digital Passport drives, then I think that they’re most likely spinning hard drives (I use these a lot myself).