How to use Terminal to copy all files of a certain type from a failing hard drive

backupfoldersterminal

I need to use terminal to copy my Pictures folder from a failing harddrive onto another drive, but I can't actually change into the folder and use just cp *.jpg ~/Documents. Is there a way to do this without having to navigate into the source directory?

Doesn't need to be copy obviously, just whatever that can get my files out of the drive.

Edit:
Found a way around my current problem, so I figured I'd add it. (The answers below did work on other folders, just not on the one I was having problems with. I guess nothing can handle the nightmare that is iPhoto.)

I couldn't see the subfolders of my /Pictures/ directory (and couldn't change the permissions on the folder since the disk is broken).
But, using terminal, and

sudo find /Volumes/Olddisk/Users/me/Pictures/ -type d

I got it to print the subfolders (and could probably use the trick in the answers on the individual folders, I guess) so within the mess of iPhoto I found my pictures at

/Volumes/Olddisk/Users/me/Pictures//iPhoto Library/Masters/2010

and just resorted to grabbing each year with

sudo cp -rpv "/Volumes/Olddisk/Users/me/Pictures//iPhoto Library/Masters/2006" ./

Best Answer

I use rsync to do this sort of copy

for example

rsync -aE source_dir/*.jpg target_dir

The option E copies the ACLs and a does the unix permissions and times ad recurses down the directoty tree

rsync can also be setup to copy to remote machines without mounting drives.

There are some GUI front ends for rsync e.g. aRsync.

Note Applke supplies an old version newr versions can be got from packae managers and see the current rsync man page Note the command line -aE seems to be -AX now.

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How to automaticly move every file on desktop to specific folder based on extension

You can do this in the terminal (shell). Open the terminal and type cd ~/Desktop to change you current working directory to the Desktop.

Then for the different cases you listed:

mv *.PSD *.Ai *.INDD ~/Desktop/Workfiles

mv *.PNG *.JPG ~/Desktop/Pictures

mv *.doc *docx *.xls *.pdf ~/Desktop/Documents

mv file target is the command to move files. You can move multiple files at once: mv file1 file2 file3 target. The asterisk * is the so-called wild card character. So * stands for every character or character sequence. *.doc would mean that it would affect all files that end with .doc. You could also do it other way around, e.g., A* to affect all files that start with A.

If you want, you can copy the following lines into an empty text file and save it as example.sh and add #!/bin/bash to the first line. Make it executable by typing chmod ugo+x example.sh. Then, you can use it every time you want to move your files from your desktop by typing ./example.sh in the shell from your desktop.

So the suggested script contents would could look like this:

#!/bin/bash

cd ~/Desktop

mv *.PSD *.Ai *.INDD ~/Desktop/Workfiles
mv *.PNG *.JPG ~/Desktop/Pictures
mv *.doc *docx *.xls *.pdf ~/Desktop/Documents

As mentioned in the comments, you can save it as example.command and use chmod ugo+x to make it clickable and executable

MacOS – Terminal command to delete all images in folder and subfolders

To just list them (for review/verification):

find MYFOLDER -type f \( -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.gif' \) -ls

To move them to the Trash:

find MYFOLDER -type f \( -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.gif' \) -exec mv '{}' ~/.Trash/ \;

To delete them directly (no way to get them back unless you have a backup):

find MYFOLDER -type f \( -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.gif' \) -delete

Best Answer

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How to automaticly move every file on desktop to specific folder based on extension

MacOS – Terminal command to delete all images in folder and subfolders

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