multi-volumes archive under GNU/Linux
I have an external multimedia hard drive from MemUp which is not a great product.
The sad thing is that the included media-player feature (when connected to the TV) requires FAT32 partition.
This filesystem format from old Microsoft OS doesn’t allow to store files bigger than 4 GB.
Since I also use this drive to store backup likes CD/DVD images, I need to split these files.
The following two methods allow to split archives :
- split command will cut your file,
# -d switch generates numeric suffixes instead of alphabetic (.aa, .ab…)
# -b switch is used to specifiy each volume size
# optionnally, last parameter can be the prefix you want,
so, do something like this :
split -d -b699M “/path to /the /file /you /wanna split /like /PJ_Harvey-Please_Leave_Quietly.iso” pjharvey-plq.
this will produces files like :
pjharvey-plq.00
pjharvey-plq.01
… - if you would like to archive a directory and its contents (sub directories and files), you may pack it into a tar archive before sending it to split :
tar -c “/path to /my heavy loaded /directory /to backup/” | split -d -b1G - MyDigitalLife. - Maybe, one day, you will need to restore :
cat pjharvey-plq.* > pjharvey-plq.iso - if your lame friend (girlfriend, mother, grand’ma or boss) is a Windows user and WinRAR adept, try something like this (see rar manpage for more options) :
# a will tell rar to add files (create mode)
# -m sets the compression level (0..5) : store (no compress) = 0
# -v specify multi-volumes sizes
rar a -m0 -v699m pjharvey-plq.rar “/path to /the /file /you /wanna split /like /PJ_Harvey-Please_Leave_Quietly.iso”
this will produce files like :
pjharvey-plq.part01.rar
pjharvey-plq.part02.rar
…
