Note: The preparing and copying of DCPs to hard drives is not a component of the easyDCP programs. We provide information about our customer’s experience from their practice

Quality and kind of hard disk are not important but it is recommended to use a powerful interface, e.g. eSATA or USB 3.0. Commonly, carriers from the CruDataPort series are used.

The file-systeme is very important. According to DCI specification:

EXT2

or

EXT3

is required. These file systems are supported natively by LINUX. 

Third party drivers/emulations are available for MAC and Windows (e.g. Paragon).
Another recommendation is to install a LINUX system either on a remote or virtual system and have it share the mounted DCP via SAMBA.

The time it takes to copy a DCP onto a mobile hard-drive depends on the DCPs size and on the bandwidth. A 90-minute DCP can take up to 200 GB.

It is highly recommend to verify the DCPs integrity.  To do that, you can start the DCP validation (included in easyDCP Creator+ and easyDCP Player+) and run a Hash-check (e.g. with MD5) of the DCP before copying to the hard disc. After copying run the Hash-check again. The results of the hash-check must be identical otherwise the DCP may crash.

This extra work is in no relation to later exchange of the DCP in the cinema. 

Copying needs to be done independently from the easyDCP application, e.g. with Finder or Windows Explorer. Customers with macOS like to use the program DCP Transfer. 
Also professional mass-duplication software is available and convinient for larger copy batch jobs.

Additional hint: Using of Digital Cinema Naming Convention is higly recommend to ease the workflow in the cinema server. Create correct syntax of Digital Cinema Naming Convention is embedded in easyDCP applications.