This is the first time I’m doing backups from EndeavourOS.
I have copied my folder with all the files, but on an SSD it tells me that it has one size, and on an HDD it tells me that it has another size, but it has the same number of files, I don’t understand.
Maybe inside it has hidden windows files or something?
This really worries me because I don’t know if everything was copied correctly or if a corrupt file was left.
Normally on Windows I look at the exact number of bytes in size to make sure everything copied over fine.
You are, using an EnOS dual boot, backing up your windows files from an NTFS-formatted drive to another NTFS drive?
I havbe no idea why the size might be different. (edit: one thing I’m confident about is that it’s nothing to do with “windows’ hidden files”; the filesystem doesn’t care about that.)
For backups, I’d strongly advise learning and using the rsync command. It’ll check timestamps, file size, (even contents with -c), on each file, and can be re-run very fast (not with -c, though, because it needs to read everything in that case). If any file was truncated, rsync will find it, fast.
I don’t use NTFS nor have I used any Windows in well over 10 years. I don’t recommend NTFS for a Linux file system. But I don’t recommend MS crap to anyone.
No idea if the backup is good. The only way to be sure is to calculate a shasum for every file. Howeve, keep in mind that if you ever move or copy these files to a POSIX filesystem like ext4 or Btrfs, they will all have messed up permissions and you will have to fix that with chmod.
I want to move my files from Windows 10 to EndeavourOS.
Sometimes I do things like go into Windows 10 from EndeavourOS and delete/play/edit files that are in Windows 10 (I don’t know if this should be done).
I also move files from Windows 10 to EndeavourOS, although sometimes I get errors like “Desktop.ini” cannot be moved (or something like that, I can’t remember).
I have 3 hard drives:
-sda: (SSD 240gbs)
sda1 > Windows 10 (NTFS)
sda2 > Windows 10 (NTFS)
sda3 > Windows 10 (NTFS)
sda4 > EndeavorOS (ext4)
(dual boot Windows 10 + EndeavorOS)
(My EndeavourOS only has the “/” partition because I didn’t know how to create partitions with Calamares and I installed all EndeavourOS on “/” (sda4))
-sdb: (SSD 240 gbs) (NTFS) (here I only save files/backup or install games)
-sdc: (HDD 250 gbs) (NTFS) (here I only save files/backup or install games)
I make the backup from sda to an external hard drive. But currently the backup is on Windows 10 and I want to move it to EndeavourOS and sdb and sdc.
But it seems that copying files from Windows 10 and pasting it into EndeavourOS is not the way, right?
So I want:
I want to copy the backup which is on sda1/2/3 (can’t remember right now) and paste it on sda4, sdb and sdc.
I am new to linux do you have any guide to know what it is and how i should use “rsync”?
So copy/paste into Windows from EndeavourOS isn’t the correct/official way to transfer files from Windows 10 to Endeavour, right?
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 223,6G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 50M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 119,4G 0 part
├─sda3 8:3 0 535M 0 part
└─sda4 8:4 0 103,6G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 223,6G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 223,6G 0 part
sdc 8:32 0 232,9G 0 disk
└─sdc1 8:33 0 232,9G 0 part
Yes friend, I don’t like Windows either, that’s why I’m leaving Windows 10 and making EndeavoursOS my only OS.
So I’m trying to move files from Windows 10 (NTFS) to EndeavourOS (ext4).
Although unfortunately for now I can’t leave Windows 10 as I am a new Linux user and still learning how to use Linux. For that reason I have the dual boot.
Although maybe it would have been better to install EndeavourOS on sda and Windows 10 on sdb, but I don’t want Windows 10 to take 1 hard drive just for itself, since now I spend 90% of the time on EndeavourOS.
I am also having trouble playing CSGO on EndeavourOS, so until that issue is fixed, I can still play CSGO with my friends on Windows 10.
Yes and no.
sda1/2/3 (NTFS) to sda4 (ext4)
and
sda1/2/3 (NTFS) to sdb (NTFS) and sdc (NTFS)
But operating from EndeavorOS (sda4).
Although, I’m thinking of formatting sdb and sdc, but I don’t know what format yet, as maybe for now I should leave a format that Windows 10 and EndeavourOS have access to.
Sorry friend, I’m new to Linux and I didn’t quite understand. You mean when I copied and pasted the files from Windows 10 to the other 2 hard drives with NTFS (from EndeavourOS), they couldn’t be copied correctly, because it wasn’t the right way to do it, right?
I also copied and pasted from windows 10 to EndeavourOS desktop. I think that backup ended badly too.
Shashum and chmod, is this a linux command?
Thanks friend, I thought I could just copy/paste all the files as normal from the EndeavourOS desktop. I even deleted, played and edited Windows 10 files and videos from EndeavourOS, so I thought it was compatible and there would be no problem between files.
I don’t know what rsync is but I’m going to look for some video tutorial, thanks again friend!
You shouldn’t be using NTFS on Linux, because it doesn’t store the permissions of the files. On Linux, every file has an owner and a set of permissions, which are stored on the filesystem. NTFS doesn’t support that. So when you copy files from NTFS to ext4 (or Btrfs, or any other POSIX filesystem), permissions are not copied (because they don’t exist on NTFS, so there is nothing to copy). That means the copied files and directories will be with wrong permissions, typically 777. You probably want your non-executable files like pictures and music to have permissions 644, and directories 755.
I know these numbers mean nothing to you, so I suggest you read this:
no need to leave one for the other unless you wish to. I did a dual boot way back when however I found that by using Linux more I became less dependent on Windows. So I ended up removing Windows as I was using Linux 99% of the time using only windows to update the windows system and to play a couple of games. Decided in the end it just wasn’t worth the disk space for Windows.
To add to what @Kresimir is telling you, just think of it like this NTFS is Microsoft specific. Microsoft does not take Linux File permissions into consideration. This could be a security risk as NTFS does not store the correct file permissions for Linux.
The first, in context, refers to the general concept of checksums, hash, one-way function, cryptographic hash etc, more so than any specific command (though a command by that exact name does exist).
There are many specific hash functions, like CRC32, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512, … they are used as small “signatures” of large amounts of data; if the data is modified, the signature changes; thus they serve for data integrity checking. (Among many other applications)
The second is a command, to change permissions of files.
You can, to an extent. As mentioned by others there are concepts like permissions that you’ll need to become aware of.
But this discussion about permissions is a side path from the original question: is your backup borked? Have some files been truncated?
And my general point is that you should never make a backup, which is serious business with thousands of files, by just copy/pasting folders in a GUI, because it’s harder to see when anything goes wrong, or to repeat the process reliably. That’s true no matter the OS or filesystems involved.
rsync is a command that’s very well suited for that. It copies data from source to destination if (by default) the data is missing from the destination / is not up-to-date (based on timestamp and size of files). So not only is it a great command for the initial copy, it’s great for incremental backup, as it’ll only copy new files rather than everything else again.
$ rsync -avhP sourcedestination
is a good starting point.
Consult the manual ($ man rsync) to see what each option (-a, -v,…) does. Add -c to the list of options if you want to check your backup byte for byte — it takes longer, but you’ll want to do that here since we don’t trust the initial copy.
Do small tests on junk data to master its use before pointing it at your real files.
This looks like an okay tutorial; it mentions --dry-run and the subtlety about the meaning of a trailing slash in the source or destination, which is good.
rsync is a complex command, with a lot to take in, but it’s well worth your time, because doing good backups is not that simple. Rsync gives you a lot of tools to do it right.
I’m going to read your post again carefully, and do tests little by little.
So this is the correct way to convert NTFS files to ext4.
But I have a question. My backup is 7zip compressed with password on Windows 10.
So, before using that command in Terminal, I have to unzip all the files and start this process, right?
Because I think, the 7zip with password, if I convert it to ext4, when I unzip it, it will still be NTFS files, or something like that, so I guess I should unzip everything first.
Im not sure about windows permissions with 7zip however I can say that permissions are dealt with differently between the OS’s so when you unzip to your Linux system the permissions should default to the current user. 7zip does not store any Linux permissions. You would need to use a program like tar to do that.
your not converting the files only the file system is different. main difference for the user is permissions between the two file systems.
Thank you friend. And yes, I too became almost independent of Windows. Although for example, when I broke an nvidia driver on EOS a few days ago, I was able to start Windows and enter the forum, and ask all of you in the forum for help.
In that only case, the dual boot was of great help. Although I might as well have booted from the EOS live usb now that I think about it…
I was going to say “but I can’t play some of the most games”, but then I read your article, and I saw that you mentioned Wine as other friends of our forum.
And I also recently read about Proton, Lutris, Coffe, etc, which help to play Windows games, and some of them are emulators.
I’ve also heard that you can install games with the installer.exe with emulators like Wine, so it might be able to emulate 1 player games as well, that would be really cool.
I’m looking into Wine and other methods to emulate games that are only compatible with Windows.
Really the world of Linux is too big, there are still so many basic things that I have to learn!
