[doveman2]

My brother's RPi's USB stick died so I bought him a new one. Obviously it's currently formatted to FAT32 and I believe the RPi needs it to be ext4 doesn't it?

If I change the cmdline to use the USB for storage instead of the SD, will it automatically reformat it when I reboot? Even so, that's not ideal as it won't have his correct settings so what I'd ideally like to do is copy his current storage from the SD to the USB before changing the cmdline, so that it's already setup correctly when I switch it over.

I can format the USB on the PC as ext4 with MiniTool Partition Wizard, so should I do that and then put the USB stick in the RPi? Then, how would I copy the storage from SD to USB via Putty? Would I need to stop XBMC first?

If anyone can give me the correct commands, that would be much appreciated.

[dandnsmith]

I think you mised out some info
after the USB stick died, was the system converted to use (just) the SD Card?

You won't get automatic formatting of the new stick - but there are sufficient tools to do the job if you have a RPi system running just on SD card.

Conversion from SD card system to SD/Usb stick has been covered in the forums - I'd hate to try to list the steps from memory.

[doveman2]

I think you mised out some info
after the USB stick died, was the system converted to use (just) the SD Card?

You won't get automatic formatting of the new stick - but there are sufficient tools to do the job if you have a RPi system running just on SD card.

Conversion from SD card system to SD/Usb stick has been covered in the forums - I'd hate to try to list the steps from memory.

Yeah, I already had a backup on the SD card secondary partition so I just changed the cmdline.txt to use that for storage instead of the USB, so once I've copied storage to the new USB I just need to change cmdline.txt back again.

[trogggy]

USB stick is ext4, yes. I've used MiniTool Partition Wizard in the past and it works fine.
I've used a few methods:
1. Copy the files across directly in linux (I'm using a virtualbox ubuntu install on a windows pc for that at the moment).
The only bump in the road there is you need to use sudo chmod -R 777 /<path of the stick> in terminal to get write access...
or
2. Boot up a pi running from sd card (ie normal config.txt) with the formatted usb stick already inserted.
In explorer open \\OpenELEC\ or \\<ipaddressofpi>\ and hunt about for the stick. I think you'll find it in \Media. Then just copy / paste whatever you want.
3. Like 2 but using filezilla or similar.

I'm sure there are plenty of other ways, but those have all worked for me.

[doveman2]

USB stick is ext4, yes. I've used MiniTool Partition Wizard in the past and it works fine.
I've used a few methods:
1. Copy the files across directly in linux (I'm using a virtualbox ubuntu install on a windows pc for that at the moment).
The only bump in the road there is you need to use sudo chmod -R 777 /<path of the stick> in terminal to get write access...
or
2. Boot up a pi running from sd card (ie normal config.txt) with the formatted usb stick already inserted.
In explorer open \\OpenELEC\ or \\<ipaddressofpi>\ and hunt about for the stick. I think you'll find it in \Media. Then just copy / paste whatever you want.
3. Like 2 but using filezilla or similar.

I'm sure there are plenty of other ways, but those have all worked for me.

Thanks man, that sounds quite straightforward.

Will the permissions get copied across correctly if I copy the files with Windows explorer though? That's always my worry with using WinSCP (or FileZilla) to copy the files to my PC and then back to the RPi.

[trogggy]

I've never had a problem copying files to or from an openelec storage partition - as long as it's not the running one. Explorer, WinSCP, Filezilla - they'll all do the job. Never come across a permissions issue.
It's only when you're trying to write to the storage partition that's running (or you're trying to fiddle with 'system') that it becomes more complicated in my experience.

[doveman2]

I've never had a problem copying files to or from an openelec storage partition - as long as it's not the running one. Explorer, WinSCP, Filezilla - they'll all do the job. Never come across a permissions issue.
It's only when you're trying to write to the storage partition that's running (or you're trying to fiddle with 'system') that it becomes more complicated in my experience.

OK, thanks. That's one less thing to worry about then