File Transfer Problem: Early Wheezy on Pi 2B

[CaptSunset]

Hi guys, this is sort of embarassing 'cause I know I knew this, but am now kinda flummoxed.

I'm giving a lady friend one of my 'old' Raspberry Pi 2Bs, it had whichever version of Debian Wheezy was current when the 2B first came out, but as my first Pi, it was frequently if ignorantly apt-get upgraded.

My problem is about offloading some important files to a flashdrive. The PNY 8G seems to be properly mounted, and I've transferred individual .pdfs, .mp3s, .pngs, .txts, etc without a hitch. The trouble is a folder that contains several saved webpages that are two parts: a file & a folder containing the numerous page content files. (They are the Adafruit setup instructions for their old #1983 2.8" Touchscreen hat.)

When I try to copy the archived parent folder to the flashdrive, I get a message that it already exists on the drive- and what do I want to do? The only option Wheezy gives is to overwrite the existing files, but the newly created parent folder sure appears empty. So do trying it with any subfolders.

What am I doing wrong?

Also, I'm wondering if an upgrade to Jessie on a 2B runs smooth; she only wants a surf, mail, and smart typewriter machine and has been using Ubuntu on a very vintage Acer for a while without panicking. That still means basically a GUI user...

[topguy]

You could zip down the folder and copy it that way.

[RaTTuS]

sudo rsync -vax / user@remote machine
then sort out what is what later

sudo rsync -vax / /mnt/whatever the local drive is mounted as [make it an ext partiton]

do it by hand
cp local files /mnt/whatever/directory

[CaptSunset]

Thanks, guys, I will give those methods a try; one is bound to work, right?

If we had a Like button, I'd like you both. Wait, that came out wrong...

[CaptSunset]

OK , this is sorta solved, but revealed another issue.

First I tried TopGuy's idea of zipping it, but 7-zip wasn't installed and apt-get gave me trouble finding it (spelling: 7zip, 7-zip, 7-Zip, etc), so I tried the GUI built-in Archiver.

The Archiver seemed to work, and I could copy the package onto the flashdrive, and it wasn't empty.

However, trying to test-extract the files on a win7 machine got a package corrupted message.
Yet I was then able to open & extract the same package with no problem on a Pi3B running Jessie.

If you're working with multiple OSes, I'd say be sure to test any archival method for cross-platform compatibility.