Cloning existing DCP to a USB stick on a Mac

[dcpclone]

Hello! What is the best practice to clone a DCP to a usb stick on a mac computer?

[Carsten]

Click and drag it in the finder, just like an ordinary copy?

Depending on the size of your DCP, or better, reels (MXF files), you may need to use an NTFS (or ext2/3) formatted USB Stick. Most USB sticks come preformatted in FAT32. These only work if your largest MXF file of that DCP is smaller than 4GB, as that is the max filesize for FAT32 formatted media (stick or disc). In order to write to NTFS discs or sticks from OS X, you need special software, like Tuxera NTFS or Paragon (I prefer Tuxera). Same for ext2/ext3.

Also, when you create/delete a partition, choose 'MBR' not GPT/GUID. The latter is the default in OS X, but not safe for DCP drives. Always use MBR for DCP drives.

- Carsten

[dcpclone]

Click and drag it in the finder, just like an ordinary copy?

Depending on the size of your DCP, or better, reels (MXF files), you may need to use an NTFS (or ext2/3) formatted USB Stick. Most USB sticks come preformatted in FAT32. These only work if your largest MXF file of that DCP is smaller than 4GB, as that is the max filesize for FAT32 formatted media (stick or disc). In order to write to NTFS discs or sticks from OS X, you need special software, like Tuxera NTFS or Paragon (I prefer Tuxera). Same for ext2/ext3.

Also, when you create/delete a partition, choose 'MBR' not GPT/GUID. The latter is the default in OS X, but not safe for DCP drives. Always use MBR for DCP drives.

- Carsten

Carsten thank you for the prompt reply, the drives need to be EXT3 for compatibility reasons. I have read that you can't simply drag and drop files from EXT3 DCP drive to EXT3 drive

[Carsten]

Yes, provided that you have an ext3 driver with write support, a simple finder copy should work. If your target drive has at least the same capacity as your source drive, you could also try to image the ext3 drive to the new drive. I never did that, though, with an ext3 drive so far.

- Carsten

[dcpclone]

So I tried to do a drag drop copy on Ubuntu and I get this error (tried different external drives) Error while copying - Error splicing file: input/output error
Source and destination are EXT3/4

[Carsten]

What do you mean with 'EXT3/4'? They are very different. EXT2 and EXT3 are more or less identical, but not EXT4.

- Carsten

[dcpclone]

What do you mean with 'EXT3/4'? They are very different. EXT2 and EXT3 are more or less identical, but not EXT4.

- Carsten

If I load the drive on Ubuntu and click properties it says EXT 3/4

[dcpclone]

Does anyone know why I'm getting the error?