Error 36 when trying to back up files

Question

I'm trying to back up files for this year and keep getting the
"Error 36 - Can't read or write" message.
I'm in os x 10.2.8.
I've got 2 hard drives... One for the system & apps, the other for work files. I think the drive I have my work files on may be getting fried... I was having btree problems about a year ago and had a new drive put in for my system, erased the orginal drive and use it for files now.
any suggestions?
g4 mirror front   Mac OS X (10.2.x)  
g4 mirror front   Mac OS X (10.2.x)  

Answer 1

Betty
INstead of backing up to CDs (very laborious) why not invest in an external firewire hard drive?
Using a neat freeware utility called Carbon Copy Cloner, you can make a BOOTABLE clone of your entire hard drive, to this external drive, in about 30 minutes or less. In an emergency you always have a spare, working hard drive and all your stuff on it.
It sounds to me as if you need one soon....
I use a LaCie 250 GB, bought from the Apple Store, which I partitioned into 2 sections, one of which is about 20% bigger than the hard drive in my powerbook. I use that partition to clone my entire powerbook HD - about once a week. There is a great little application that does this for you, called Carbon Copy Cloner.
The other partition on the external HD is for my iTunes music, which is so gigantic it won't fit on the disk in my powerbook.
Because I'm paranoid, I also have a *backup of the backup* on another computer.
If you get an external FW HD as I suggest, I think you should back up everything to that, anyway, as your first priority. You are then free to play around with the HDs inside your computer, to find out what (if anything) is wrong with them. You can rest easy, knowing you have a full clone on your external HD, should anything bad happen.
If your internal HD is making strange sounds, it may be about to do that final crash. THere is a little piece of freeware that allows you to test a disk. I don't know of any other way to tell that a hard drive may be about to die. But they DO die.
The little piece of freeware is called Smart Reporter and is downloadable here
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23232