Copying large files hangs at "less than a minute"

hi,
When copying large files around my intel mac mini system the Finder appears to freeze just before the end - when the dialog window is telling me that there's "less than a minute" left. It doesn't happen ALL the time, just enough times to be a real nuisance.
Killing the finder doesn't help - I need to power off to regain control of the Finder.
This recently started to happen after I opened up the mac mini to add more memory. Not sure if this is related - everything else seems to be ok. I have a mixture of USB and Firewire external drives - the mac mini is used to hold all my HD camcorder files and process the iMovie rendering to disk.
I'm running the latest version of os x with all the updates.
Any suggestions?
P
Mac Intel Mini Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hi,
Hello! It's likely a firmware issue with an external
drive. Check the ext drive's site to see if there's a
firmware upgrade. Tom
Thanks for the reply Tom. I've downloaded a firmware updater from the Lacie site, and I'm apparently uptodate. However, I also have a USB Seagate external drive, but the Seagate site seems to only provide support for Windows. grr.
Is this a known problem with certain drives/firmware?
thanks,
P
Mac Intel Mini Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Similar Messages

Time Machine Migration hanging on "Less than one minute remaining"

I decided to take a risk with my iMac and do an erase and install with Leopard, the version of OS X it's been running for years now. The reinstall went fine migration assistent got me started transferring my information from my Time Machine external USB 2.0 hard drive. It said it was just over 200 GB of information. That proceeded fine until it reached the "Less than one minute remaining" mark. It's been sitting here for over 12 hours in the "transferring files to support applications" process. What should I do? Is it alright for me to manually turn off the computer and re-boot? There is no cancel button or anything. I do get the pleasant clunking sound when I hit enter.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
If you have connected both computers with a cable, disconnect and connect that cable again, so migration should continue. If it doesn't work, restart your MacBook Pro and check that all the files have been transferred. If not, open Migration Assistant and transfer your files

Lion install hangs at less than 1 minute

Downloaded and installed Lion accepting the limitations of installing to a raid partition (2 x 2tb raid 0). Suggested would take 33 minutes to install 8 hours ago and now it's stuck at less than 1 minute. Any suggestions? Thanks

When I installed Lion Server I wasn't even given any options related to installing on a RAID partition. My install hung up and that was that. And because there was no recovery disk there was no way to rescue what was obviously a problem.
My own experience was using RAID 1 ( mirrored boot disk ). I split the mirror, recovered Snow Leopard from a Time Machine backup using the Snow Leopard server install disk onto the primary disk from the mirror ( now reformatted as a regular disk ). Then installation proceeded with no hitches at all.
Once installation was complete I rebuilt the RAID mirror and the installation is now working.
However, I can't offer you help with the RAID 0 stripe. All I do know is that all attempts to try and install onto my RAID array ( whether reading about limitations on the Apple website or not ) led to failure and the machine being stuck in a boot/install failure cycle.
Once I had my server with a regular 'normal' hard drive things proceeded as expected.
Now I have the joy of looking into my Console and seeing thousands of failures floating up the screen ready for more remediation work :-(.

If you migration hangs at "less than a minute remaining," maybe ok still

I just wanted to describe my experience using the Migration Assistant app with my new 15" MacBook Pro i7 model.
I had a Core2Duo MacBook (black casing) with about 185GB of data on it. I setup the Migration Assistant process to import the data to my new Macbook Pro, after about 4 hours of importing it hung at the 10 minute remaining point telling me to check my connection (ethernet) for problems. I changed out the ethernet cable and had to click "continue" about 3 times before it started working again.
Then at the "less than one minute remaining" point, which was an hour of waiting for me, I called Apple Support and basically we determined it wasn't going to move and just canceled and rebooted.
At first it appeared nothing transferred to the MacBook Pro because I was greeted with the choose language prompts upon first rebooting. However, just go through those as normal, choose NOT to import any data then go to the desktop (you may still have to create a dummy login account) then go to Accounts and choose the one you migrated which hopefully is there, then just delete the dummy account.
Glad I realized this before going through another 4+ hour migration!
Hope this can help someone if it happens to them.

I ran into something similar yesterday while running Migration Assistant.
I solved this riddle myself by turning off the WiFi on both computers. For some reason, with an ethernet connection checked, the Migration Assistant still chose to transfer my data via WiFi with quickest time estimate of over 24 hours.
The only other time I did this with Migration Assistant, it apparently used the ethernet cabling right from the start.
This latest attempt is only going to take about 2 hours. As to why Migration would choose wifi when there was a valid ethernet connection available, I'll leave that to the experts. With AirPort turned off, I transfered about 120GB of data in slightly less than 2 hours.

Copying large file sets to external drives hangs copy process

Hi all,
Goal: to move large media file libraries for iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie to external drives. Will move this drive as a media drive for a new iMac 2013. I am attempting to consolidate many old drives over the years and consolidate to newer and larger drives.
Hardware: moving from a Mac Pro 2010 to variety of USB and other drives for use with a 2013 iMac. The example below is from the boot drive of the Mac Pro. Today, the target drive was a 3 TB Seagate GoFlex ? USB 3 drive formatted as HFS+ Journaled. All drives are this format. I was using the Seagate drive on both the MacPro USB 2 and the iMac USB 3. I also use a NitroAV Firewire and USB hub to connect 3-4 USB and FW drives to the Mac Pro.
OS: Mac OS X 10.9.1 on Mac Pro 2010
Problem: Today--trying to copy large file sets such as iTunes, iPhoto libs, iMovie events from internal Mac drives to external drive(s) will hang the copy process (forever). This seems to mostly happen with very large batches of files: for example, an entire folder of iMovie events, the iTunes library; the iPhoto library. Symptom is that the process starts and then hangs at a variety of different points, never completing the copy. Requires a force quit of Finder and then a hard power reboot of the Mac. Recent examples today were (a) a hang at 3 Gb for a 72 Gb iTunes file; (b) hang at 13 Gb for same 72 Gb iTunes file; (c) hang at 61 Gb for a 290 Gb iPhoto file. In the past, I have had similar drive-copying issues from a variety of USB 2, USB 3 and FW drives (old and new) mostly on the Mac Pro 2010. The libraries and programs seem to run fine with no errors. Small folder copying is rarely an issue. Drives are not making weird noises. Drives were checked for permissions and repairs. Early trip to Genius Bar did not find any hardware issues on the internal drives.
I seem to get these "dropoff" of hard drives unmounting themselves and other drive-copy hangs more often than I should. These drives seem to be ok much of the time but they do drop off here and there.
Attempted solutions today: (1) Turned off all networking on Mac -- Ethernet and WiFi. This appeared to work and allowed the 72 Gb iTunes file to fully copy without an issue. However, on the next several attempts to copy the iPhoto and the hangs returned (at 16 and then 61 Gb) with no additional workarounds. (2) Restart changes the amount of copying per instance but still hangs. (3) Last line of a crash report said "Thunderbolt" but the Mac Pro had no Thunderbolt or Mini Display Port. I did format the Seagate drive on the new iMac that has Thunderbolt. ???
Related threads were slightly different. Any thoughts or solutions would be appreciated. Better copy software than Apple's Finder? I want the new Mac to be clean and thus did not do data migration. Should I do that only for the iPhoto library? I'm stumped.
It seems like more and more people will need to large media file sets to external drives as they load up more and more iPhone movies (my thing) and buy new Macs with smaller Flash storage. Why can't the copy process just "skip" the parts of the thing it can't copy and continue the process? Put an X on the photos/movies that didn't make it?
Thanks -- John

I'm having a similar problem. I'm using a MacBook Pro 2012 with a 500GB SSD as the main drive, 1TB internal drive (removed the optical drive), and also tried running from a Sandisk Ultra 64GB Micro SDXC card with the beta version of Mavericks.
I have a HUGE 1TB Final Cut Pro library that I need to get off my LaCie Thunderbolt drive and moved to a 3TB WD USB 3.0 drive. Every time I've tried to copy it the process would hang at some point, roughly 20% of the way through, then my MacBook would eventually restart on its own. No luck getting the file copied. Now I'm trying to create a disk image using disk utility to get the file from the Thunderbolt drive and saved to the 3TB WD drive. It's been running for half an hour so far and appears that it could take as long a 5 hours to complete.
Doing the copy via disk image was a shot in the dark and I'm not sure how well it will work if I need to actually use the files again. I'll post my results after I see what's happened.

Copying hangs when copying large files from DVD

I'm having trouble copying large files (>2GB) from DVDs to my built-in hard drive. When I drag the file icon from the DVD window to the desktop, the progress bar pops up almost immediately, and says "0 KB of 2.3 GB copied" and "Estimated time left: 1 minute" -- and then it just sits there, doing nothing. In some cases, after five minutes or so of inactivity, the copy finally begins... but most of the time it never does. Force-Quit doesn't help; the only way out is to do an emergency restart and try again.
This problem began when I upgraded to Tiger, and several members of my office group have been experiencing the same problem on their own computers as well.
I've poked around the forum looking for answers but the only thing I could find that looked related was a conflict between iSight and some third-party external hard drives... but none of us have iSight, and none of us are using third-party external drives, so clearly that's not the issue we'rehaving.
Any help out there?
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Michael, I occasionally notice anomolous behaviour when files get dragged between volumes. Mostly the copying window shows an accurate and immediate indication of what's going on, but other times it just looks like nothing's happening, the display never changes, yet, it is in fact copying the files over. Now, if you're copying 2gb files from DVD to HD, it's gonna take some time, more than 5 minutes, so I'm wondering how long you've left it before forcing it to quit?

Copying large files to internal HD works for a bit, then freezes

Hello fellow Mac users,
I have a fairly heavily modified G4 Digital Audio. It was originally the 533Mhz model, then upgraded to a Dual 1.2. All in all, it is a workhorse, but I have a very strange issue that seems to be creeping up - when I copy files, particularly large ones (I originally thought greater that 4GB, but now it has happened to files that are less than 3GB). Files will start to copy just fine, then the progress bar will stop and the file transfer freezes. Sometimes I get the spinning pinwheel, sometimes not. When I press 'stop', it does nothing and I end up having to crash the machine and reboot.
I recently installed a Sonnet ATA/133 card and a large 300GB drive. The whole point of having a large drive like this is to copy large files, right? Seems that whenever I try to copy files to the new drive, the process begins and things are very quick, until it hits a particular file and then just stops.
There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with either the Sonnet ATA133 or the drive, necessarily. I've run Disk Warrior, repaired permissions, zapped PRAM and NVRAM. I've tried eliminating devices and nothing seems to really work. The new drive is a Maxtor 300GB. The jumper setting was set to 'CS Enabled'. I'm not really sure what that means. I then changed it to Master and made sure that is was the master on the ATA bus, but the problem persists either way.
I'm wondering if anyone else has had trouble copying large files (I'm sure many of you have installed large drives on a G4), if this is an anomoly, or if any of you have any advice.
Cheers,
Shane

Update as to how I got it to work:
I did get it to work... although it's still a little perplexing as to exactly why:
I mentioned previously that I'd switched the jumpers on the HD's from 'CS enabled' to 'Master'. This actually made things worse. Files started freezing after only copying 100MB or so. So I switched them back. Once I switched the jumpers back to 'CS enabled', things started working. I even copied over an 86GB MP3 folder in under an hour! This solution is odd, as I'm sure that this is how I had it set previously. However, maybe something wasn't connecting right or the computer was finally in the mood to do it... I don't know.. but I am grateful that it's working...
Shane

Unresponsive system when copying large files drive-to-drive (x86_64)

I'm running Arch x86_64 on a quad core Xeon processor/P35 motherboard w/ 4 gigs of RAM. I also have two SATAII, 7200 RPM HDDs. For the most part, Arch is a VERY responsive platform. I am noticing some really odd unresponsiveness that only happens when I copy large files from one hdd to another hdd.
Symptoms:
-Mouse cursor skips (doesn't move smoothly)
-Windows such as firefox or shell don't move smoothly across the screen if I move them
-Keyboard lag - as I type this post ) my fingers are going faster than the text is appearing
Once the copy is finished, everything is normal again. I swear I read someone else reporting this behavior, I just can't find it. Two questions:
1) Is normal for the x86_64 kernel?
2) If not, what can I tweak to remedy it?
EDIT: Ack! Found the post I remembered reading:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=70525
Last edited by graysky (2009-07-04 10:51:35)

if the file is bigger than 4gig(uncompressed) then u need swap partition, as the first thing it does is copy the file to memory and if it overflows it is bad. then your server is 1/3 options, either server/middle/desktop. if it is server, it doesn't care what framerate u get on X. then there is the timer. I'm running mine at 300 but arch's default should be 1000. the higher it is the more it "checks" what needs to be done with files, events, etc. then there is the file system type and block size factor. if ur block size is really low like me(1024k) then ur hd has to write more times(on and off) just to write out the huge file. so for huge files, format with huge block size(4096k?) so that the hd does less work.
Last edited by darthaxul (2009-07-04 19:49:07)

Can't copy large files to AirPort Disk Using Windows 7

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.
AirPort Extreme:
- Firmware version: 7.6.1
- Airport disks secured by password
- No guest access allowed
- Airport Disk Preferences:
- Automatically discover airport disks is enabled
- Show Airport Disks in the system tray is enabled
External Drive:
- Western Digital 500 GB MyBook External Drive connected to Airport Extreme thru USB
- FAT32 Formated
Computers:
- 2 Toshiba Proteges, Both with 4GB RAM
- Both have Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1, 64-bit version
- (Sorry we have no MacBooks at home, just iPhones and iPods!)
Airport Utility:
- Version 5.6.1
Airport Disk Preferences Utility:
- Version 1.5.5.3
A week ago, I was able to copy over large files (videos <4GB in size) to the drive. Now, when I try to copy over these large files to the drive, the copy dialog box hangs. I receive a message stating that Windows is calculating the size, but then it doesn't copy over. Windows then gives me a message that it is unable to copy to the drive. When I test the drive connection by copying a small text file over, it copies over quickly and seamlessly. This problem occurs on both computers.
I am able to do the following with the drive connection:
- Read files
- Change file names
- Copy files from the drive to my computer
- See the contents of drive
I've tried all the combinations of the following with no success:
- Turning off Windows Search
- Downgrading the firmware
- Reconfiguring wireless adapter
- Rebooting computer
- Rebooting wireless router
- Rebooting external drive
The drive seems to be working fine except for when I want to copy <2GB files over to the drive. Does anyone have a solution that seems to work?
Thanks!

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
    a) Fortunately, I have a 1TB ultraportable USB drive which has enough space to backup all data on the drive
2) Format the external drive to HFS+ using one of the methods below
    a) Plug it into a Mac and format it
     b) Use Gparted (free) to format it
3) Plug the drive back into the Airport Extreme
4) Start copying files over to your networked drive!
I hope this helps you! Cheers!

Copying large files freezes other Macs on the network

Hello everyone,
since we added a Mac Pro to our network, other clients sometimes hang and have to disconnect to a server (Xserve), when we copy large files (100MB and up) to that server with the Mac Pro.
Like the other G5's, the faster G4's and some PC servers, it is connected on gigabit speed.
Can someone help me to pinpoint this problem, or give me more information on finding the cause?
Maybe this can be usefull:
We replaced the cable by a Cat6 UTP cable.
Slowing down to 100mbit did not solve the problem.
We could not reproduce the problem when connected directly to the Xserve (no switch or patch pannel, only the cat6 cable).
Many thanks in advance for your help.

Hello,
yesterday, may boss, ordered some people to check the cabling and connections in our network.
They revealed several problems and advice to replace all cabling to cat6 or cat7.
Is the MP susceptible to network imperfections? Our other G5's never suffered from network flaws (now the ethernet cards are Intel instead of 'Apple' design...)
I did some other tests, and set the MTU to 750 instead of de default 1500. Without success.
I am trying to finde som info in the logfiles, but do not seam to find any details about the network problems. Where should I look? The system log, netinfo log is empty...
Greetings,
peter.

TC and WD500 External drive - Locks up when copying large files

I have a TC with a Western Digital 500GB my Book connected to the USB port on the TC that I use for network Storage. Everything works fine until I try to copy large files or directories from the Finder mounted share. After the copy freezes the external drive can no longer be seen by airport utility. If I look at disks it sees the disk but no partition. I have to power cycle the external drive to have TC see the drive again. Then I disconnect the drive and plug it in directly to the MAC and run disk utility and his repairs the journal. I have to do the repair every time it locks up. Should the external drive be formatted different or does it have to be connected to a USB hub. Or is this just a bug with the TC and afp ?

I have this very same problem.
I tried to copy a 4GB+ folder from the Macbook to the 500GB MyBook attached to my TC and it froze.
Now the the files on the MyBook are invisible when attached to the TC ("0 Items") but are available when the drive is connected directly to the Macbook. I have run disk utility but it hasn't helped. The disk is FAT 32 formatted and the files on the MyBook are still invisible over the network.
When the drive attached to the Macbook directly I can see a 'phantom' file with the same title as the 4GB+ folder I'd tried to copy. This file is "ZERO KB" and it cannot be deleted (error code -43).
Anyone have a clue what is happening here?

Error code 8084 when copying large files from VNX servers

Hi,
We are experiencing problems when attempting to copy large files from our central VNX servers (EMC) using the connection format of smb://<host>/. With Mavericks this will be SMB2, presumably. Anything over a few MB in size fails with the error:
The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8084)
Looking in the Console logs we see the following:
kernel[0]: smb2_smb_read_write_fill: len got reduced, must be running low on credits
If we attempt this on OS X Mountain Lion or below we have no problems.
If, with Mavericks, we connect using the format cifs://<host>/ then file transfers work.
Has anyone come across this before? Thinking I should also post a bug...
Cheers,
Ian
IT Infrastructure, Open University, UK

Not helping but others are having the same problem...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2564624

Using Windows 8.2 and copying large files over USB 3.0 to Segate Backup Plus USB hard drive - I get the following error:-

Using Windows 8.1 and copying large files over USB 3.0 to Segate hard drive - I get the following error:-
Error 0x80070079: The semaphore timeout period has expired
Using Windows 8.1 with a 3 - 4TB USB Segate drive that is using Microsoft's bitlocker. It seems I can copy small files w/out issues; however, copying large files and directories causes this error. Connectivity is USB 3.0 from a Dell
Latitue3 e6520 to Segagate drive.
Can anyone share fix or determine methodology to fix?

Hi Joe,
Was the error gone when you turned off the Bitlocker from this drive?
If no, please refer to this similar thread's solution to resolve:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/c3fc9f5d-c073-4a9f-bb3d-b7bb8f893f78/error-0x80070079-the-semaphore-timeout-period-has-expired?forum=itprovistanetworking
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help, and unmark the answers if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]

Can't copy large files to an USB Disk pugged in an USB hub

When I tried to copy large files to my USB disk pugged in an USB hub, it stopped at 220 Kb... When I plug the disk to the internal back USB port it works fine ¿Any idea?
Thanks

Hi, cguzman -
Related to what Templeton suggested, if your USB hub does not have external power (self-power), try replacing it with one that does.
If your hub is self-powered, many of those have a small selector switch on the side or rear which allow the choice of self- or bus-power. If yours has such a switch, make sure it is not set to 'bus'.

Can't copy large files to NAS

I have a Cirago USB NAS adapter that I have one 120 GB external drive connected to.
The external drive is FAT32 formatted.
I can connect to the drive just fine and can copy small files to it without a problem.
When I try to copy larger files to it (~700 MB or greater) it gives me an error saying there isn't enough space on the drive.
The drive has over 40 GB of space available though.
Not sure what the heck is going on...

I ended up having to connect to the NAS differently.
The nas automatically showed up in the Finder when I started it up for the first time.
It just showed up as "nas"
Well, I needed to go to the Go menu in finder then click "Connect to server"
I then had to enter a specific address
http://nas.local:9880
It then asked for login credentials.
The only difference is it connected via WebDAV this time around.

Copying large files hangs at "less than a minute"

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for