How can I transfer big data from my s-drive to Nextcloud application? What is the best way for that?

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How can I transfer big data from my s-drive to Nextcloud? What is the best way for that?

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I assume you’re asking here whether there is someway to pre-seed a Nextcloud folder structure? Whilst I do know the Nextcloud file structure, I’m not sure you can copy files into it behind the scenes (rsync, robocopy etc) and then expect them to appear in the Nextcloud file system - there actual file metadata (name, folder, permissions etc) are stored in the Nextcloud database.

There might be a way to tell Nextcloud to scan the folder system and add any files it finds to the database. Somebody with more knowledge than me will have to answer that.

So assuming the above doesn’t work, I tend to use good old robocopy with the mirror option to copy from the source into the Nextcloud folder. The sync client will then upload them into the cloud. FreeFileSync on Windows would also be worth looking at.

Some caveats:

  1. Depending upon where the Nextcloud folder is on your computer, it’s probably limited in size. Say it’s 240GB but your S: drive (mapped drive somewhere?) may be a lot bigger. So you’ll have to do it in bits. Copy some folders, let them sync and then free up space. Then move to next folder
  2. Nextcloud upload sync isn’t fast even if the Nextcloud server is on the same LAN. Internet upload speeds are often pretty slow compared to download on FTTC internet connections. So expect the migration to take days. However, the advantage of robocopy/freefilesync is that you can let it do the bulk first and then run it again to pickup the changes.
  3. Watch out for path lengths. If I ever meet the programmer who wrote #defined MAXPATH 260 in Windows back in the 90s, they’re in trouble :slight_smile: