Copying folders from one disk to another

I have been trying to copy folders from one external drive to another ..... the files are coming from my old Home Folder to another drive so I can reformat that drive in EXT4 rather than the NTFS itis presently formatted in .... I keep getting a message saying I don't have permission .... see photo below ....

Great now I can't download photos to the forum .... I give up

Can you change ownership of the drive to yourself?
In GUI:

sudo -i

(Since Frog is using Nemo FM on Zorin):

nemo

(Core):

nautilus

(Lite):

thunar

In the elevated File Manger, navigate to the devices > drive - then right click and choose the Permissions tab. Set the permissions to your user ownership.

Terminal:

chown -R $USER:$USER /path/to/mounted/partition

1 Like

I find this very strange as in all the years I have used external HD's I have never run into this before .... I half-heartily tried you suggestion above but I must have don something wrong or more likely didn't know what I was doing .....

Not sure if trying to move files from a NTFS formated disk to a EXT4 disk would make any difference or not but I decided to try and copy the NTFS drive to my laptop and so far it is working but very slowly ... trying to copy 381 GB and it says 2 hrs ... but it is copying so we'll see .....

I'll then copy it to another EXT4 external drive to save as a backup .... format the other drive into EXT4 and see if that makes a difference .... who knows the 1 TB external drive maybe petering out or maybe my USB 3 port or driver maybe at fault ....

To bad there is no way to see what MB drivers are loaded by Zorin .... I'm using the 5.15.0-52-Generic Kernel .... here is a photo of Neofetch ....

Copied everything over successfully all 700 GB .... time frame was off for downloading as it went a lot quicker .... tried to copy folders from laptop back to a WD passport 1 TB after being formatted in EXT4 but got the same message I didn't have permission ....

Tried to change ownership of the drive to myself using all three examples .... Nemo .... Nautilus and Thunar .... all of them came up with warnings and or errors .... except Thunar .... said not installed ..... see copies below ....

mike@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for mike:
root@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~# nemo

** (nemo:39253): WARNING **: 12:50:11.911: Current gtk theme is not known to have nemo support (moebius) - checking...
nautilus
root@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~# nautilus
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/nautilus-python/extensions/kdeconnect-share.py", line 37, in
i18n = gettext.translation('kdeconnect-nautilus-extension')
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/gettext.py", line 603, in translation
raise FileNotFoundError(ENOENT,
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No translation file found for domain: 'kdeconnect-nautilus-extension'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/nautilus-python/extensions/kdeconnect-share.py", line 40, in
print('kdeconnect-nautilus: {0}'.format(e.strerr))
AttributeError: 'FileNotFoundError' object has no attribute 'strerr'

** (org.gnome.Nautilus:39313): WARNING **: 12:51:02.542: Unable to get contents of the bookmarks file: Error opening file /root/.gtk-bookmarks: No such file or directory

** (org.gnome.Nautilus:39313): WARNING **: 12:51:02.542: Unable to get contents of the bookmarks file: Error opening file /root/.gtk-bookmarks: No such file or directory
Nautilus-Share-Message: 12:51:02.605: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: Failed to execute child process “net” (No such file or directory)

mike@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for mike:
root@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~# nautilus
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/nautilus-python/extensions/kdeconnect-share.py", line 37, in
i18n = gettext.translation('kdeconnect-nautilus-extension')
File "/usr/lib/python3.8/gettext.py", line 603, in translation
raise FileNotFoundError(ENOENT,
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No translation file found for domain: 'kdeconnect-nautilus-extension'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/nautilus-python/extensions/kdeconnect-share.py", line 40, in
print('kdeconnect-nautilus: {0}'.format(e.strerr))
AttributeError: 'FileNotFoundError' object has no attribute 'strerr'

** (org.gnome.Nautilus:39580): WARNING **: 12:54:58.050: Unable to get contents of the bookmarks file: Error opening file /root/.gtk-bookmarks: No such file or directory

** (org.gnome.Nautilus:39580): WARNING **: 12:54:58.050: Unable to get contents of the bookmarks file: Error opening file /root/.gtk-bookmarks: No such file or directory
Nautilus-Share-Message: 12:54:58.111: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: Failed to execute child process “net” (No such file or directory)

mike@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for mike:
root@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~# thunar

Command 'thunar' not found, but can be installed with:

apt install thunar

root@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~#

Thunar is the XFCE desktop file manager. I believe you do not have XFCE installed at all.

The other warnings you got can be ignored.

What they mean:
The files that are referenced when opening the file manager such as personal bookmarks are all stored in /home
When opening in root, the file manager references the root directory instead of the home directory and therefor, cannot find your bookmarks. This is to be expected.
So... it can be ignored.

1 Like

Just in case I set up my partitions or something else wrong please have a look ..... here is the message I get ....look in the top left hand icons and on the very end you will see two partitions .... Old Backups and Timeshift (the last one) stored on that HD ..... then in the next two photos you will see my Zorin OS drive which is internal and the last photo is the Passport external drive with it's two partitions marked Timeshift and Old Backups .....

It says permissions is lacking in the destination. Where are you copying to?

1 Like

To the WD Passport 1 TB external HD

AH
ok... I had misunderstood.
What is the exact path to your destination?
/media/dev... ?

1 Like

I did a search on Passports and found that it said to .....

Hi,

I suggest you to edit the ownership of the drive. Just do right click on the drive and click on properties and go to the security tab and click on “Edit” button available under the “Group or User name”. After changing the ownership check the drive is accessible or not.

Well first off I have no security setting but I do have a permissions setting but it says this ..... see photo

I have 7 of these passports 6 1 TB and one is 500 GB .... they all say the same thing there is no security setting listed ....

Sorry I guess the board or my laptop got locked up I had to restart to clear everything ....

/media/dev... ?

I think so at least that is what the partition said after I set it up ....

Ok, can you please ensure that the drive is mounted, then check:

blkid

or

lsblk

1 Like

This hard disk have software security password where they are security with some copy data files.
100% you have on this hard disk software security password or something. I know because i bought that some pendrive also have that.
"Drives come pre-installed with WD Security software that can be used to password protect access to the drive".
Check hard disks if the heads are functional with some program.

mike@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~$ blkid
/dev/sda2: UUID="19dfc62f-f5fd-4b23-9656-9f8d1c23b6fb" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="2ad6bc6d-8357-475c-a8a1-8477525f9b3a"
/dev/sda3: UUID="1f4e72c0-9263-4f73-bbb6-f6ddd8006bc8" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="7eafa648-2104-483d-afa2-8e93c48e83be"
mike@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 476M 0 part /boot
├─sda2 8:2 0 2.8G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda3 8:3 0 209.6G 0 part /
└─sda4 8:4 0 718.7G 0 part /home
sdb 8:16 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 681.9G 0 part /media/mike/Timeshift
└─sdb2 8:18 0 249.7G 0 part /media/mike/Old Backup
nvme0n1 259:0 0 238.5G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 260M 0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 16M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 237.4G 0 part
└─nvme0n1p4 259:4 0 850M 0 part
mike@mike-ROG-Strix-G731GT-G731GT:~$

I see these... but not the passport drive. Is it mounted?

1 Like

I assume so here is a photo from further up the thread .... it shows the little keys in each partition .....

Right now I am over on Win 10 took one of the blank WD Passports ..... trying it over here ..... had to format and change to run on Win 10 ..... when I moved folders from Win to the HD it copied them fine .... BUT .... when I took files out of that folder and tried to copy and or slide them from Win to the HD it says "You need to provide Administrator Permissions to Copy to This Folder" ..... I could find nothing in the right mouse menu to give permission to the drive ....

I know they are to different systems but I'm grasping at straws right now .....

Back on Zorin again ......I reformatted my Passport back to EXT4 from NFTS
and same problem .... so I deleted the EXT4 and formatted it using NFTS again ..... named the partition Disk 1 .... only made the one partition ..... clicked on the Disk 1 on the desktop .... moved it to the right side .... opened the Home folder moved it to the left side then copied a folder and then some pictures from Home .... Left side ..... to Disk 1 .... SUCCESS .... moved the folder and pictures back again to Home and .... SUCCESS .... see photo below .....

I have not tried to make any partitions yet ..... so does this mean I can only format in NFTS ?????

I'm gonna take a rest for a while ..... been working on this far to long .... read to many suggestions on the web and now my mind is shutting down from confusion .... I did however find the single partition using NTFS on my own but don't know how or why it worked .... see you folks later ......

Just so you don't think I've gone totally bananas ..... I did another Passport the same way using Disk 2 with only the one partition and NTFS (sorry forgot to take a snapshot) ..... BUT ..... when I tried the same approach with Disk 3 which has my Timeshift backup and still running EXT4 ..... I get this ....

Now I'll say goodnight .....

I'm not sure if this would be a solution to my USB WD Passport HD problem or not but everything I have read on the web in the past 3 days says that Western Digital ..... WD ..... doesn't support Linux ..... in fact it doesn't even recognize Linux or so I have read by people have or reporting problems with their external USB HD Passports .... some are even saying don't waste your time contacting WD as they won't even answer you about Linux ....

However all their Passports come installed in NTFS and will work on Linux just don't format them in EXT4 .... that was my problem as all three of my newer drives I formatted to EXT4 instead of leaving them in NTFS .....

So why did I format them to EXT4 ???? ..... because I have been told that NTFS would run a lot slower than EXT4 and as I do copy and past a lot of files to my Passports I needed all the speed I could muster through my USB 3 ports ....

I just checked this morning and all 4 of my older Passports are still formatted in NTFS while my 3 newer ones I changed to EXT4 ..... 2 of those I converted back to NTFS and thy are now working fine .... my last one is still converted in EXT4 and contain my Timeshift saves and as soon as I figure out how to save that file to another drive I will wipe and format that one back to NTFS ....

Well that is my theory anyway .... someone else may shoot holes in it but till then I'm sticking to it ..... :+1: :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like