Copying large file from SD to HDD via USB failing on Ubuntu

Question

I'm attempting to copy some large files from my camera (Canon EOS 500D) to my laptop, which is running 64 bit Ubuntu 9.04. I am using USB to connect the two devices.

For most files, it is simply a matter of Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. I have done this successfully many times with both photos and small movies (eg. 180MB).

However, when I attempt to do this with very large files (eg. 3GB), the copy seems to start with a lot of activity both on the camera and laptop, but after 10 minutes or so the camera is automatically unmounted and the copy fails to complete.

I have read that this might be due to the device not mounting as a mass storage device, but I cannot see any obvious way for me to change this behavior.

Can anyone offer any direction here? I'll get a USB card reader if necessary, but I'd prefer to be able to just plug my camera in.

Answer 1

At least try a card reader as part of your troubleshooting steps.

Swapping out one hardware component for a work-a-like is a good thing -- if your problem continues, the hardware component you swapped out is good; if your problem disappears, the hardware component is bad.

Of course it's rarely that simple, so here are some other helpful tests:

• Does the problem recur if you try the camera on another computer?

• Does the problem recur if you try the card in a card reader on another computer?

• Does the problem recur if you boot into a different kernel version? Try both camera & card reader on the different kernel.

In Linux, most drivers are included as part of the kernel, so the driver code can differ (and driver behavior can differ) between versions. Something that doesn't work in one kernel may work in an older or newer kernel.

Answer 2

If you're using FAT32 partitions/formatting, you simply can't. FAT32 can't handle files bigger then 4GiB.

Use a modern filesystem (if possible) like ext2/3/4, XFS, ReiserFS (one of them is optimized for big files, I always forget which one) or if you must, NTFS.

Answer 3

sudo apt-get install gphoto2
gphoto2 --auto-detect
gphoto2 --get-all-files

I found this on the following site.