I recently need to transfer large tar files to an external USB hard drive from one Red Hat ES 5 server to another (neither with network connectivity).
Originally I was trying to move ~90gig tar file from the server to the external drive. This transfer worked, but when it came time to unmount the drive I received an I/O error refusing the device disconnect and then it unmounted, but not cleanly. I tried to do ~20-30gig files and the same thing happened. After breaking things up to ~10-15gig tar balls things were transfered just fine.
I was hoping someone could provide some insight as to why I experienced problems with the larger tar files (other then my own in-experience). Any information would be great!