Issue:
Using either Dolphin File Manager or ftp, copying a directory of around 70GB to an USB storage formatted in NTFS stopped mid-way without notification at less than 10GB copied.
Checking the system log (/var/log/messages), the following was supposed to be relevant:
- quiet_error: 20 callbacks suppressed
- Buffer I/O error on device sdc1
- lost page write due to I/O error on sdc1
Though it’s not easy to figure out what went wrong, I think it’s the front USB port/channel issue on my HP. The source directory is another USB drive connected to the rear USB port. I have tried the rear USB port to test if it’s the port issue.
Solution:
- remove the USB storage and connect it to the router’s USB port
- Mount the USB storage as samba
Config:
- OpenSUSE 12.3
- Dolphin 2.2
- KDE 4.10.5
- Router Linksys EA6700
- FileZilla 3.7
Tricks:
- Even after using a Windows 7 PC to full format the USB drive, fault still happened.
- Merely typing smb://192.168.1.1 on Dolphin may see the samba share content but cannot write on any samba directory
- Mounting the samba share requires stating the share directory in the command
- To let non-root user to write on the samba share, it’s not permitted to mount the samba share from non-root user, chmod to 0777 had no change to directory permission state, but rather mount it by root and state in the option the uid of the linux user, i.e.
mount -t cifs -o uid=[userid], rw //192.168.1.1/[share] /[mount_pt]
Though the transfer speed between the PC and router fluctuated a lot from 7MB/s to 36MB/s (using USB2.0 instead of USB3.0), it’s better to have it done eventually than using the USB port on the PC with stable transfer speed around 25MB/s and then I/O died down quietly.
Using NTFS as the USB file system as it’s good to be share among Linux and Mac as it’s mature and both Linux and Mac have ntfs-3g utility to read and write NTFS drive. exFAT may be an alternative but not easy to find a way to deploy this Windows proprietary file system.
