I would like to backup important files (totaling about 400GB) on my ext 4 RAID 5 array to an ext4 external hard drive over USB (external drive is mounted to /mnt. In the future I’d like to automate the process using rsync and cron so for now I’m using rsync to transfer the files. My problem is that using the rsync command like this:
rsync -Pr “/dir1” “/dir2” “/dir3” “/dir4” /mnt
rsync shows me the checks and transfers for awhile and then throws up an i/o error (wish I had a screenshot to show but I don’t). When I ls /mnt I get a similar i/o error. I then check /dev for the drive and find that it no longer shows up. Originally the partition was /dev/sdc1. I tried unplugging the USB at this point, plugging it back in and mounting the drive back to /mnt, however it has now assigned it to (you guessed it) /dev/sdd1. I get the drive mounted and try the original rsync command again, hoping the first error was a fluke or some kind of one-time drive fart. This time it makes it quite a bit further and then throws up the exact same problem. Am I doing something terribly wrong here? As I said, I’m very new to bash so I’m not making some absolutely moronic, newbie mistake. Any advice would be much appreciated!