Can't Copy Large Files To External Drive

This is driving me nuts. I'm running 10.4.11 with an external Newer Tech Ministack 320GB hard drive that's only ten weeks old. Yesterday I downloaded some large (50mb or so) QuickTime files to my desktop, which is to say my internal drive. I then tried to copy them to my external drive, since that's where I keep my movie files since they take up so much room. One copied over without any trouble, but numerous attempts to copy the others result in the process freezing after anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of the data has been copied, or else I get the "error 36" message. My first thought was that the external drive was failing, but I can copy small movie files (10mb or so) back and forth between the two drives with no problem. What's the point of having a large external drive if you can't use it for your large files? Repaired permissions on both drives, no improvement.

I have repaired permissions and run disk repair on the internal drive as well. Yes, I've played the clips in their entirety, but I'm going to do it again and look for any hiccups. That's an interesting theory and I want to check it out.
It has occurred to me that a workaround, although it by no means addresses the underlying problem, is to use QuickTime Pro to chop the clips up into several smaller files, copy them to the external drive, and then reassemble them via QuickTime Pro on the external drive.
FWIW, I neglected to mention (although I don't know if it's pertinent or not) that immediately after installing the external drive ten weeks ago I used SuperDuper to clone my entire internal drive onto the external firewire drive. I then erased the movies from the internal drive, which was bumping up against maximum capacity. I am able to boot from the external drive, and I want to retain this capacity should the internal drive (which is, after all, six and a half years old) fail.

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Can't copy large file to FW drive

I'm not sure who to ask, but when I try to copy a 7gb file to an external Lacie FW drive I keep getting Error Code 1309. I've copied the file to another drive successfully, but wonder why I can't and what the Error Code means.
Is there anything I can do besides reformat the drive? If not, and I must reformat shouldn't it be as HFS+?

I assume your external drive is formatted FAT32, so it can be read by both a Mac & PC. However, FAT32 has a limitation of 4GB files due to the fact that 4GB is the largest 32-bit number, and the length of the file in the directory entry is 32-bits.
 Cheers, Tom

Can't copy large files to external hard drive

I have a 500gb western digital my book home edition with firewire/usb/esata connections. I want to copy some large video files (1gb and higher) to this external drive but I keep getting this message: "sorry, theoperation could not be completed because an unexpected error occured (error code-1309)."
what is the dealio?

You have to erase the full drive (not the partition) which is why it is better to click on drive icon, then PARTITION tab, and set to new partition(s).
Click on OPTIONS.... below and set it to something other than Master Boot Record.
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Can't copy large files to airport extreme USB drive.

Hi Everyone,
I'm positng because I'm unable to copy large files to an AirPort Disk using Moutain Lion. I have the following setup.
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That's not entirely unusual as using that port on the AEBS for backup is an iffy business, especially if you are trying to use Time Machine which is completely unsupported by Apple.
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Hi Everyone,
I'm positng because I'm unable to copy large files to an AirPort Disk using Windows 7. I have the following setup.
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I'm happy to report that, after reformatting the drive to HFS+ (aka Mac OS Extended), there are no problems writing/copying large or small files to the AirDisk drive. I'm also happy to report that I am copying to the drive at a rate of roughly 4MB/s.
As I mentioned earlier, the only catch is that I am unable to plug the external drive directly into a Windows computer via the USB port as Windows is unable to read HFS+ formatted drives. (I can, however, plug the drive into a Mac computer as they can read HFS+ formatted drives. The only problem is that I don't own any Macs at this time! LOL!)
You're probably wondering how I formatted the external drive to HFS+ since I don't own any Macs. (Windows only allows you to format drives in exFAT, FAT, NTFS and the like.) That is a good question. Basically, I downloaded an open source formatting tool called, Gparted, which allows you to format any USB drive to any major file format system. Since Gparted is an open source tool, it is a little cumbersome to use. Once you figure out how to use it, it is a cinch to format the drive to HFS+. (Of course, an easier method would be to borrow a friend's mac, plug the drive into their mac, and format it to HFS+ using their mac.)
For a step-by-step guide on how to solve this problem, see the steps below:
1) Backup all data from external drive
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2) Format the external drive to HFS+ using one of the methods below
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3) Plug the drive back into the Airport Extreme
4) Start copying files over to your networked drive!
I hope this helps you! Cheers!

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If your external drive is FAT32 (MS-DOS) format, it won't take file larger than 4GB. There's no way around that, I'm afraid.
Matt

Can't copy large files to NAS

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I am exploring how to use iCloud drive now...and had a basic question. Can you share large files from it in a similar way as you can with dropbox?
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Related to what Templeton suggested, if your USB hub does not have external power (self-power), try replacing it with one that does.
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Copying large files to external hard drive won't work

I tried looking for this all over google and here, and i could only find old threads that didn't end up with a clear answer, so i decided to post one of my own for the first time.
Basically, I have folders of music and movies that i'm trying to move over to the external hard drive (2tb WD my book studio using firewire 800) and at one point during the copy, the finder copy window will get stuck and won't move any further. So the copy doesn't go on, and even if i try to cancel it only the beachball starts rolling and finder won't respond until i restart or unplug my external.
The weird thing is that even when I was copying a few folders that weren't too big, around 2gb or so, it did the same thing. BUT when i took 3 individual avi files that were around 3gb it copied fine.
I really don't understand what's going on, and I want to just take the entire folder, let it copy, and go do something else rather than sit here moving file after file.
Does anyone have any idea as to what's happening? I'm not sure whether to blame my imac or my external. external does time machine back ups fine tho.. I have it split into 2 partitions, one for tm and one as a FAT drive. Any help would be great! Thanks!

All right. So let's say your hard drive is named 'WD MyBook' or something like that.
Let's also say the folder you're trying to copy is your Documents folder.
In Terminal, you'd type:
sudo ditto pathToDocuments pathToWDMyBook
Now obviously, those are fake paths and don't actually represent where those things are, but that's to illustrate the syntax you need to use.
Your external drive path will be something like this:
/Volumes/WD\ MyBook
The trick here is that if there's a space in the name of the drive, you need to substitute a "\ " for the space. You can also put single quotes around the whole thing like this: '/Volumes/WD MyBook'
Everything here is case sensitive. You can also drag the icon for the external drive into the Terminal window, and it will paste the path into Terminal for you.
So the full example would turn out to be:
sudo ditto /Users/yourusername/Documents /Volumes/WD\ MyBook
If you wanted to make sure everything went into a specific folder on your external, you'd need to add that to the path you specify. For instance, if you want everything to go into a folder named Backup on your external, the command would then be:
sudo ditto /Users/yourusername/Documents /Volumes/WD\ MyBook/Backup
Either way,
sudo ditto source destination
That's it, just spaces between everything. Like I said before, you don't need the sudo necessarily, depends what you're copying.
I don't know if that makes any sense, I'm a little out of it today. Let me know if you need further clarification on any of that, or let me know what you're copying/where it's going and I can probably help you with the syntax. Or just drag and drop! It's easy.

Copy large files to external hard drive

How do I copy files fromone external hard drive to another external hard drive via mac book air

Gregory Taddeo wrote:
How do I copy files fromone external hard drive to another external hard drive via mac book air
If its from one drive TO A BLANK / NEW HD, and its a LOT of files (400+ GB)
then just use Superduper cloning software to copy it all in one click and sit back and let it work
free to use
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/superduperdescription.html

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I have a lot of media and so multiple USB and network based external hard disks.
I'm having trouble with two in particular that are recent buys. I initially mounted them via a USB hub onto my Time Capsule, but when I had errors, I've now tried mounting them directly to my MacBook Air - and for comparison directly to a Windows laptop.
And I'm only having problems when it's a Mac doing the copying (MBA to either USB mounted via Time Capsule or directly USB mounted on the MBA).
The problem is that the drive appears to behave OK for initial copies - but I'm trying to put a set of old movies (captured from a VCR ages ago that I'd recorded off TV) onto one of the drives and (a) it takes ages to copy and (b) eventually I get a write failure. The specific error message is
The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "" can't be written. (Error code -36)
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As I mentioned in my original post while the disks were originally formatted FAT32 I reformatted then and changed them to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so that isn't the issue. I still have the problem with the disks using Apple format.
I've noticed that if I do the copy in pieces, it seems to work. I.e. if I select the full set of 45GB in one copy and paste operation (dragging and dropping using Finder) it fails part way through.
But if I copy 3/4 movies at a time going back until I have copied all of them then I can get all of them on the disk.
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Best way to copy large folders to external drive?

What is the best way to transfer large folders across to external drives?
I'm trying to clean up my internal hard drive and want to copy a folder (including its sub folders) of approx 10GB of video files to an external firewire drive.
I've tried drag and drop in finder (both copy and move) and it gets stuck on a particular file and then aborts the whole process.
1. Surely it should copy everything it can, and simply not copy the problem file.
2. Is there a way I can do copy and verify, a bit like when I burn a disk so I can be sure the video files have transferred safely before I delete them from my internal drive?
Many thanks in advance for any advice.

What you are trying to do makes perfect sense to me and I have done the same prior to getting myself a Time Machine system in place.
1. Surely it should copy everything it can, and simply not copy the problem file.
The fact that it is getting stuck on a particular file suggests that there is a problem with it. Try to identify which one it is and deal with that file on it's own. It could be that there is a disk error where that file is stored.
2. Is there a way I can do copy and verify....
The copy process you are using does that implicitly as I understand it.
Chris

Can't Copy Large Files To External Drive

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