Error -36 with external harddrive

Question

As of very recently (perhaps since the installation of SuperDrive Firmware 3.0) I'm experiencing a weird problem using my FAT32 external drives (pendrive and WD external harddrive): I get -36 errors when trying to write a folder containing files to the drives. It will create the folder in the destination drive, but then give me the -36 error and stop copying the files into the folder.
I never had problems with my FAT32 drives before.
So then I thought it must have been connected to the fact that I created the specific folder and the Wordfiles in them on a PC at uni, so that perhaps it was a compatibility issue of PC-created folders/files. The funny thing is that some folders with files unrelated to a PC copy just fine. Especially the folder that I created on a PC and copied to my Mac via a pendrive (which, a couple of weeks ago, worked just fine), does now not copy to a pendrive.
Then I had the same problem with copying a folder full of newly created (on a Mac) mp3s; to and from the pendrive would give a -36 error. Since I have recently installed Dropbox on my computer, I uninstalled it (just a gut feeling, not based on any knowledge), did a clean restart and then the folder with mp3s copied fine to and from my FAT pendrive. But the problem with the specific folder full of PC-created wordfiles continued!
I'm just very confused... does anyone have the same experience and perhaps some tips?
My MacBook is only 4 months old and running 10.6.2. I recently installed the SuperDrive Firmware 3.0 update.
Message was edited by: Sebastian0883

Answer 1

there are a lot of posts about this on the forum. do a search. in a nutshell there is a bug in snow leopard Finder when dealing with FAT formatted drives. apple has promised to fix it in the next update. the bug happens when you copy a folder from a FAT formatted drive to an HFS+ formatted one and then try to copy it back later.
FAT FS doesn't support resource forks and they are kept as separate ._ files. when you copy stuff to an HFS+ formatted drive the resource forks supposed to be merged with the original but sometimes this does not happen. then when you try to copy something back the split resource fork for the hidden .DS_Store file in the folder you are trying to copy causes the error you are seeing. a workaround is to run the unix dot_clean command to reabsorb all resource forks into main files prior to copying stuff back to a FAT drive. the syntax is very simple. to do it for everything in your home directory run this in terminal
dot_clean -m ~
then you can copy anything from your home directory to a FAT drive without issues.
to do it to any other folder you do
dot_clean -m /path/to/folder
prior to copying.