External drive

don612
don612
in SecuritySpy

I have been using Security Spy for a while now and have about 300 gb of captured files on my Mac drive. I am going to begin storing captured filed to an external drive as well as retain those already captured. Is it as simple as moving my Captured Files folder to my new external drive?

Comments

  • Ben
    Ben

    Yes, you could move the Captured Files folder to the external drive, then set this folder (the new one on the external drive) as the global capture destination in SecuritySpy under Preferences > Storage. Then delete the old folder from the system drive. This is a good way to do it, because you immediately clear the space on the system drive, while retaining your existing recording history.

  • don612
    don612

    Thanks Ben!! So easy!!

  • don612
    don612

    I hit a snag. I have Fantom Drives Extreme 2TB External attached to a Mac mini M2. The captured files folder I am trying to copy over is around 375 GB. Everything should work, but I am continually getting a message that says “the drive has disappeared”. As a result, the copy process does not complete. Any thoughts as to what might be causing this?

  • Ben
    Ben

    First, try a reformat to see if this fixes the problem. Open Disk Utility, select the drive on the left, click "Partition" on the right, and set one APFS partition and apply (if there is already one APFS partition, use the "Erase" option instead). This will erase all data on the disk.

    If this doesn't fix it, try a different USB cable.

    If none of the above works, then you're probably looking at a defective drive and I think it would be best to return it for a replacement.

  • don612
    don612

    Thanks!! I will give it a try!

  • xev
    xev

    As a feature request, I would love to be able to specify multiple drives for the browser, so that I can move older files off my fast small drives and specify a much larger, slower drive for the older files. Bonus points if Security Spy can treat the secondary drive like it does the primary, and keep it to a certain size, or even migrate the files itself :)

  • Ben
    Ben

    Thanks for the feature suggestion @xev this has been requested a few times and we'll certainly consider this kind of functionality in a future version of SecuritySpy.

  • don612
    don612
    edited March 2023

    Just to follow up with my results: The Fantom Drive I am copying to is Thurderbolt 3 copying the folder from a MacMini M2 so the hardware should all be solid. I reformatted the drive and the problem persisted: the copy process would stop with a message "the drive has disappeared". I then purchased a new drive and the exact same result with the exact same message occurred with the new drive. This is not a big problem for me at this juncture because I really do not need the 375 GB of past captured files. I simply created a new "Captured Files" folder on the new external drive, set it as the target, and everything seems to be operating normally so far.

  • Ben
    Ben
    edited March 2023

    Even though you don't really need the old files copied to the new drive, an error when copying in the Finder is concerning. This is highly unusual. Since this fails, then I would worry about other disk-related tasks with this drive failing too. If it were me in this situation I would return both drives and go for a completely different model from a known reputable manufacturer (e.g. Samsung).

  • gregmcmen
    gregmcmen

    I have had a few issues like this with copying files to a USB flash drive connected to my M1 iMac (Mac OS 12.6.2). I'm not really sure how I fixed the issues I was having other than a vague recollection of setting my iMac to NOT go to sleep - not that that is your particular issue.

    I did a brief search and came up with this article and it appears to hit all of the main points from an IT troubleshooting perspective.

    https://recoverit.wondershare.com/mac-tips/external-hard-drive-keeps-disconnecting-mac.html

    You might give it a look and see if anything jumps out at you.


    Also, immediately after the external drive disappears, open up Console (Applications -Utilities folder) and look inside 'Mac Analytics Data" to see if there are any messages that could be relevant to the issue.

    Quite a few people have been reporting external drives 'mysteriously' disconnecting in later versions of the Mac OS. I'm not saying that the issue is something with Apple, but it's not unheard of, either - especially if issues referenced in the above article are ruled out.

    Regards.

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