Finder freezes when copying files to an external USB drive

I am copying video TS folders from my Mac Pro to a USB 3.0 drive, and Finder keeps freezing up. Oddly, it doesn't always happen, and it doesn't seem to be the amount of data--I've successfully copied 32GB at once, and had Finder crash trying to copy 6GB. Other details: the external drive is brand-new, and set up for OS X, I have repaired the permissions on the Mac's drive and just for kicks did the same on the Seagate USB drive. I was originally copying the files from a folder I had on the desktop, and read here that the desktop being involved in the equation is a Finder-killer, so I moved the files to a different folder. I have done this a lot in the past to a different drive with no problems whatsoever. Lastly, when this happens, all I can do a hard restart. Everything is fine when it starts back up, but after a dozen restarts in a day, I'm about to shoot myself.

Well, I can tell you this
Mac's can't use USB 3 so it's dropping to USB 2
If it's port powered, it could be drawing too much power and the Mac is cutting it off, use a powered USB hub.
If the external drive is formatted MBR with FAT32 (MSDOS) then that's a issue with over 4GB sized files, you need exFAT or HFS+
You may nee dot remove all data and Zero Erase the entire drive to map off bad sectors and before each time you copy a huge amount of data (if it hasn't ben done in the last 6 months) this catches new failing sectors.
Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's

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