Well, wouldn't you know?

[Silicate Wielder]

So, about 2 weeks ago my laptop was stolen and I had a backup drive that I could boot from, thought that was stolen too. I found it and i'm going to backup my files. I was wondering if there is any way I can easily copy the backups onto my sister's flashdrive to transfer them easily. (The hardrive runs ubuntu) her flashdrive holds 4gigs and I have over 4 gigs of files to transfer, is there any way I can compress the files down to 4 gigs?

[Azunite]

Backup drives store waaaay more than 4 gigs I believe.

[Silicate Wielder]

the hardrive holds 320 gigs but I can't easily transfer them and I need to find a way to get them all switched over in one run, (about 5.5 gigs of files to copy over)

[Rayquaza]

Compress your files into a RAR file and it should decrease the file size a little. It also means you have less files to transfer too.

Compression usually involves losing data, with RAR and ZIP types of compression, it rebuilds the data from the packed data replicating what was packed in the first place. And Is it a flash drive or a backup drive. Backup drives are actual HDDs, whereas flash drives are usually around 2-32GB. That's probably what you're talking about.

[Silicate Wielder]

I'm transfering from my HDD to flashdrive so I can get the files on my mom's computer.
It's too bad I don't have an adapter for my HDD though.

[Commander Thor]

I'm transfering from my HDD to flashdrive so I can get the files on my mom's computer.
It's too bad I don't have an adapter for my HDD though.

Why not buy a $10 external enclosure to pop it in?
That would probably be easier than trying to compress all your data to fit on a flash drive.
Then when you're done with it, you're left with a nice 320GB external hard drive.


Edit: Wait a second.
Are you trying to transfer files from your laptop, to your mom's laptop?
If so, why not do a network copy and skip the 'middleman' altogether?

Edit2: Nevermind. Re-reading your post I see you found your backup drive, not your laptop.
Yeah, use the external enclosure method. :P

[Telkanis]

Umm, if you have access to a desktop you can probably just stick it in as a second hard drive in the desktop. Then like they said, just compress the files into a .rar.