How Do I access my USB Drive

I have a usb drive and I want to copy all my sons to it.
Whoa, you have more than 500 sons? Slow down a bit. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Your USB Drive will usually be available under /Volumes/NAME_OF_DRIVE. If it's really slow to copy stuff, that might be because it is formatted in some DOS-format. If you're sure you will only need it on a Mac, you could format it as hfsplus with Disk Utility, that should speed things up.

If you're sure you will only need it on a Mac, you could format it as hfsplus with Disk Utility, that should speed things up.

Doing it via the command line is also the way to go. I've done similar transfers, and in my experience using terminal and cp is much faster than dragging the files in Finder. So, I guess you were already on the right track there :)

I suggest to use tar not cp to reserve all the file date and permission if any:

cd /Volumes/USBVOL_NAMES
tar cf - . | (cd /Volumes/OTHER_VOL_NAMES; tar xvfp -)

or copy to your home:
tar cf - . | (cd /Users/username; tar xvfp -)

change the username as your user name.

I know the cp commands but not sure how to access the USB drive? Where do I find that?

thanks

Ian

Go to the CLI:

$diskutil list

will show you every disks connected to the system along with their dev assignments including your internal HDD(s) and the external ones. Your USB drive should show up as the last entry in the list since it is connected the last to the system.

To mount and unmount your USB drive at will:

$diskutil mountDisk <dev>

will try to mount every mountable "Volumes" in the disk

$diskutil unmountDisk <dev>

will unmount every mounted "Volumes", so you can safely unplug.