Problem copying large groups of files

In attempting to send a backup of my aunt's music, I began dragging her songs out of iTunes and into a folder on my desktop. The first group of 736 songs completed without a problem. But then I tried dragging over another group of ~500 songs and the copy never seemed to take. I looked at the folder and the folder info and they have inconsistent info.
http://i363.photobucket.com/albums/oo77/lagringathing/Screenshot2009-09-30at23832PM.png
See the link: Get Info says 736 items and the info beneath the folder says 1242. Any ideas how I can fix this?

Hi again:
I rather suspect some sort of corrupt file in your source, but that is a guess (if it behaves the same way each time).
I do not know of any software setting that would cause that behavior.
Barry

Similar Messages

Copying large quantities of files weirdness

Hi,
Over the past few years I have noticed that the process of copying large quantities files can act strangely.
Weirdness #1
As the copying process nears the end, the progress bar will get all the way to the right and it will keep on copying, with the size of the files to be copied EXCEEDING the actual size of the items I am copying (X mbs of Y mbs are copied and X gets LARGER than Y!)
That didn't happen today but I thought I'd mention it. It happens alot.
What did happen today is weirdness #2
I bought a new external drive, a Western Digital 320gb PC/Mac formatted drive. I threw out the few files that showed up when I connected it, mostly PC-related but one Read Me I could read. I then looked around the internet (Apple's site wasn't much help) to see if I should reformat i, to get rid of the FAT(32?) and how. I decided I would and found some instructions, re-partitioned it, erased it and then re-partitioned it again. (I should have done the erase first but all seemed well after it all...I checked it with DIsc Utility and it found nothing wrong.)
Anyway, so I start to bring files over. I thought about using SuperDuper but couldn't understand it's options so I just copied EVERYTHING in my root folder, typing in my admin password when needed and accepting that not everything would actually go over. Most would and that is enough for me now.
Now comes the weirdness.
I watched as the files get copied and the time calculation goes from 28 hours to 2, as it copied 197,807 files (give or take a few), about 61 GB, which is what is on the Powerbook. Two hours and we're almost done.
The weirdness comes now. As the copying gets to about 20 minutes left (I didn't notice how many GB I was away from being done but it must have been in the 50s, so only 10 GB or so to go), the whole process STARTS OVER AGAIN! I didn't cry because I have seen this kind of thing before. I assumed if there was a bug with this new drive, or if I had formatted it incorrectly, that it would either work this second time or not. If it didn't I would cancel the third attempt and call for help.
It did finish. It probably got only about 10gb into the second round and then it finished suddenly!
What is going on!
Is this (are these two things?) a known bug with the Finder?
I have been using OSX for about 3 years now. Weirdness #1 happens occasionally. #2 may have happened before but is rarer.
Thanks for any help.
Cheer,
John L

First of all, I have had problems copying large files with Tiger. For the most part, the system behaves itself, but occasionally, things go wrong or take way too long. However, I should note that 95% of these problems have been with FAT32 formatted drives.
Okay, first of all, I'm hoping this external drive you bought has FireWire. If it does, use FireWire 400 instead of USB 2.0, it's twice the speed (contrary to what the specs might lead you to believe). Of course, if it has FireWire 800, you should use that.
Backing up is brilliant, more people should do this. That's a VERY smart thing to do.
If SuperDuper gives you problems. Try something called iBackup. I've been using it a lot and it's brilliant. You put check marks on the files/folders you want backed up and it backs it all up for you whenever you want. You can even set specified times in the day for it to backup. It's free, you can get it here:
http://grapefruit.ch/ibackup/
My Seagate external hard drive's manual recommends that you format any hard drive that is to be used on a Mac to Mac OS (extended journaled) format to prevent data loss. It also says it's better that you use third-party software to allow the Windows to read Mac OS formatted disks than it is to leave your disk FAT32 formatted.
Reasons to use Mac OS format instead of FAT32:
• Extends spotlight searches to your external drive
• Allows files to be larger than 4 GB
• The Mac can read and edit it more quickly
• The drive name doesn't have to be in all caps and limited to like 8 characters
hope this helps!

System hangs when copying large quantity of files from external HD

A little background:
I was having some problems with the original OS (10.4.1), including periodic freezes. I bought the Mac Box Set '09 and installed Snow Leopard (10.6.5), but ran into some problems and in the process had to reformat my internal hard drive. I backed up all of my photos (~16GB), Documents (~1.5GB) and Music (~50GB) on a WD external hard drive (My Passport 750GB).
*The problem*: After the 10.6.5 install, the computer works great (no random freezing when I click around in Finder), but I am having trouble copying files back to the internal HD from the external. I can copy up to about 1GB at a time without any problems, but any time I try to copy more than that, the system hangs (first the spinning disk cursor, then it totally freezes) and I have to do a hard reset. I have tried copying a number of different folders (pictures and music), and the same holds true: small folders with a few files copy without a hitch, but any time I try to copy a lot of files at once: freeze city. This problem occurs whether I am using Finder to copy the files or iPhoto/iTunes to import them.
I have verified both disks using the Disk Utility AND restructured/verified them using DiskWarrior. I also had no problem copying all of my files from My Passport to a second external HD using this MacBook, so I assume the Passport is fine. Is this a physical problem with my internal HD? If so, why can't DiskWarrior or DiskUtility catch it? I just noticed that there is an internal HD recall for this model of macbook, although I have never gotten the question mark on startup that would qualify me for a replacement HD from Apple. Maybe it's a problem with Snow Leopard... I would love to know if anyone has had this problem before or has some advice.
Thanks,
Sam

External USB/FW drives 'falling off' or drives spinning down (going to sleep) and I would assume since you have been running 10.4 that the Passport might be older model, perhaps not the latest firmware, maybe not compatible with Macs and with Snow Leopard.
Obviously you want FW800 but for some, USB worked where FW fails.
Hard Reset: do you have another hard drive to boot from to run Disk Warrior? is that updated to 4.2 or later? you never want to run DW from CD. Else, boot from OS X 10.6.5; or Single User and run FSCK. HFS+ doesn't take kindly to hard restarts even though a Safe Boot helps a little, that isn't as good as FSCK or one of the other options.
Disk Warrior Rebuild is more thorough, but if you hold OPTION while clicking on REBUILD it brings up more choices. And you want to scan the full hard drive.
Going back to Aug/Sept 2009, there were a lot of threads about external hard drive issues. Wish I could point to a good one.

Finder issues when copying large amount of files to external drive

When copying large amount of data over firewire 800, finder gives me an error that a file is in use and locks the drive up. I have to force eject. When I reopen the drive, there are a bunch of 0kb files sitting in the directory that did not get copied over. This is happens on multiple drives. I've attached a screen shot of what things look like when I reopen the drive after forcing an eject. Sometime I have to relaunch finder to get back up and running correctly. I've repaired permissions for what it's worth.
10.6.8, by the way, 2.93 12-core, 48gb of ram, fully up to date. This has been happening for a long time, just now trying to find a solution

Scott Oliphant wrote:
iomega, lacie, 500GB, 1TB, etc, seems to be drive independent. I've formatted and started over with several of the drives and same thing. If I copy the files over in smaller chunks (say, 70GB) as opposed to 600GB, the problem does not happen. It's like finder is holding on to some of the info when it puts it's "ghost" on the destination drive before it's copied over and keeping the file locked when it tries to write over it.
This may be a stretch since I have no experience with iomega and no recent experience with LaCie drives, but the different results if transfers are large or small may be a tip-off.
I ran into something similar with Seagate GoFlex drives and the problem was heat. Virtually none of these drives are ventilated properly (i.e, no fans and not much, if any, air flow) and with extended use, they get really hot and start to generate errors. Seagate's solution is to shut the drive down when not actually in use, which doesn't always play nice with Macs. Your drives may use a different technique for temperature control, or maybe none at all. Relatively small data transfers will allow the drives to recover; very large transfers won't, and to make things worse, as the drive heats up, the transfer rate will often slow down because of the errors. That can be seen if you leave Activity Monitor open and watch the transfer rate over time (a method which Seagate tech support said was worthless because Activity Monitor was unreliable and GoFlex drives had no heat problem).
If that's what's wrong, there really isn't any solution except using the smaller chunks of data which you've found works.

Problems copying large files to external disks

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)
I"ve tried a whole variety of setups - as I've said via Time Capsule and directly mounted. I also wondered if the file system on the drive would make a difference. Out of the box it was formatted with FAT32 and when that failed I've now reformatted with MacOS file system - which I would have thought would give better compatibility (and I've read that FAT32 has a large file size limit - although I think it's 4GB and while I do have one file at 4.04GB, it's not failing the copy on that file).
I've also connected the drive (when formatted FAT32) to a Windows laptop and (a) it copies faster and (b) it copies successfully.
Any suggestions for this? Is there some kind of large file (all are >1GB) copy issue with USB mounted devices in OSX?

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.
It suggests to me it's some kind of issue with copying and pasting a very large amount of data in Snow Leopard?

Automator: copy a large group of files, but say 10 at a time

What I am looking for is a way to use Automator to traverse a folder structure and move X number of files each day from Folder-A to Folder-B, maintaining the folder structure.
The reason behind this is:
I have Dropbox all working and all my current and recent files are sync'ed with dropbox.
However I have a folder structure with a large collection of photos that I would like to have in Dropbox, i don't want to use an excessive amount of internet usage each day and i don't want to swamp the Dropbox application with a huge upload, as recent files changes just get added to the Dropbox Q and are not processed immediately.
So in short I want to trickle upload a number of photos each day or hour, and over a number of weeks load all of the photos to dropbox.
unless there is a copy application that will do the job I am thinking of Automator
any other sugestions welcome
Alan

ok, this should work, though it's a bit rough around the edges. Copy this code into the script editor, adjust as needed, save it as a stay-open application, then run it. it will continue working until you quit the app. Notes:
you need to set the correct paths in the properties at the top. This uses the Finder, so it expects HFS (colon delimited) paths. the code I've given converts POSIX (slash delimited) paths to HFS style. it should work transparently, but if you edit the code be aware
I tested this using duplicate (so as not to mess up my own file system) so it's not perfectly tested
if you try to move files across file systems (e.g. from an external drive to the dropbox folder) the Finder will automatically duplicate, and this script (which relies on files being actually moved) will fail
it works on a folder-by-folder basis (I was too lazy to construct cross-folder move lists), so if you have a short folder it may move less than the intended 50
it will leave the empty file structure behind in the master folder (I didn't add code for deleting empty folders)
idle time should be given in hours (for convenience). if you want the more traditional seconds, find the line return idleTime * 3600 and delete the multiplier
I didn't make any checks for completetion, so this app will continue running even after all the files are moved. You'll have to quit it manually
try not to quit the app in the middle of a move. It shouldn't be a problem, but no sense testing fate
property idleTime : 2 -- idle time in hours
property baseFolder : (POSIX file "/Users/Alan/MasterPhotos/") as text
property dropboxFolder : (POSIX file "/path/to/dropbox folder/") as text
property fileLimit : 50
on idle
          set filesToMove to {}
          tell application "Finder"
                    set yearFolders to folders of folder baseFolder
                    repeat with thisYearFolder in yearFolders
-- store name of currnet year folder
                              set workingYear to name of thisYearFolder
                              set monthFolders to folders of thisYearFolder
                              repeat with thisMonthFolder in monthFolders
-- store name of current month folder
                                        set workingMonth to name of thisMonthFolder
                                        set yearMonthFiles to (files of thisMonthFolder whose label index is not doneLabelIndex)
                                        if (count of yearMonthFiles) > fileLimit then
                                                  set filesToMove to items 0 thru fileLimit of yearMonthFiles
                                                  exit repeat
                                        else if (count of yearMonthFiles) > 0 then
                                                  set filesToMove to yearMonthFiles
                                                  exit repeat
                                        end if
                              end repeat
                              if (count of filesToMove) > 0 then exit repeat
                    end repeat
                    if (count of filesToMove) > 0 then
                              set yearFolderReference to my checkForFolder({parentFolder:folder dropboxFolder, folderName:workingYear})
                              set monthFolderReference to my checkForFolder({parentFolder:yearFolderReference, folderName:workingMonth})
-- move the files
                              set movedFiles to move filesToMove to monthFolderReference without replacing
                    end if
          end tell
          return idleTime * 3600
end idle
to checkForFolder({parentFolder:fParent, folderName:fName})
-- find or create a folder
          tell application "Finder"
                    if not (exists folder fName of fParent) then
                              set output to make new folder at fParent with properties {name:fName}
                    else
                              set output to folder fName of fParent
                    end if
          end tell
-- returns a Finder reference to the folder
          return output
end checkForFolder

Mountain Lion Finder "unresponsive" (Beach balls) when trying to copy large amount of files

Before Mountain Lion, using Lion - transfering 999 files from my compact flash card to my SSD hard drive via a FW800 reader was SO easy. Select all, drag and drop and the transfer would begin immediately.
Now, after upgrading to Mountain Lion, I experience at least 60 seconds of beach balls and an "unresponsive" finder. Sometimes it starts to transfer, sometimes I have to relaunch finder.
I've reset the PRAM (although I didn't hear 4 beeps), the SMC, I did verify and repair disk permissions.
Any thoughts on this?
Thank you,
(Late 2011 15 in MBP)

Scott Oliphant wrote:
iomega, lacie, 500GB, 1TB, etc, seems to be drive independent. I've formatted and started over with several of the drives and same thing. If I copy the files over in smaller chunks (say, 70GB) as opposed to 600GB, the problem does not happen. It's like finder is holding on to some of the info when it puts it's "ghost" on the destination drive before it's copied over and keeping the file locked when it tries to write over it.
This may be a stretch since I have no experience with iomega and no recent experience with LaCie drives, but the different results if transfers are large or small may be a tip-off.
I ran into something similar with Seagate GoFlex drives and the problem was heat. Virtually none of these drives are ventilated properly (i.e, no fans and not much, if any, air flow) and with extended use, they get really hot and start to generate errors. Seagate's solution is to shut the drive down when not actually in use, which doesn't always play nice with Macs. Your drives may use a different technique for temperature control, or maybe none at all. Relatively small data transfers will allow the drives to recover; very large transfers won't, and to make things worse, as the drive heats up, the transfer rate will often slow down because of the errors. That can be seen if you leave Activity Monitor open and watch the transfer rate over time (a method which Seagate tech support said was worthless because Activity Monitor was unreliable and GoFlex drives had no heat problem).
If that's what's wrong, there really isn't any solution except using the smaller chunks of data which you've found works.

Copying large number of files with Finder

When you copy lots of files and folders with Finder, it appears to count up the number of "items" and then start copying and at the same time the number of items remaining gets smaller and smaller as the copy process proceeds.
My question is what are the "items" that Finder is referring to? I did this on a folder with several folders and files and it came up with like about 45K items, but if I open up a Terminal window and do a "find . -print | wc" I get like about 155K lines, which I would have thought were the "items" that Finder is referring to, but obviously not.
So what is it that Finder means when it talks about "items" when copying things around?
If it matters I was copying the files from external drive to another external drive. And both external drives were physically attached to the two USB ports on a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.8
Also, is there a way to find out the number of "items" that Finder just copied as sometimes this number goes away so quickly before it registers on my eyeball/brain synapses Darn those fast computers I can go to the Finder's "Edit" menu and undo the last operation but is there somewhere that the number of items last processed can be looked at?
And one last Finder question - is the progress bar that the Copy operation shows measure the number of items or the magnitude of the amount of MB it has copied or about to copy? So a copy of two items of 10GB each would progress in three discreet jumps (0%, 50% and 100%) and go much quicker versus a copy of 10Billion items of two bytes each - even though a total of 20GB were transferred in both cases?
Thanks...
-Bob

ReallyDeepYogurt wrote:
My question is what are the "items" that Finder is referring to? I did this on a folder with several folders and files and it came up with like about 45K items, but if I open up a Terminal window and do a "find . -print | wc" I get like about 155K lines, which I would have thought were the "items" that Finder is referring to, but obviously not.
This is a guess, but I'd think that the Finder considers a "package" to be one item, while the "find" command counts each file within a package.

How can I batch turn on/turn off layers in a large group of files

I lifted this code from another discussion that purports to say it works, but it doesn't.
I keep getting the Error: Object does not support the property or method 'length'
I've looked at other batch process scripts that that line of code seems to be correct.
I know this is a very simple script, and that the turn on/turn off layer part of the script works perfectly fine (on individuall pages), but for some reason I can't get it to batch process.
I have a multi-version set of files with layers such as "de" for germany, "us" for United States, etc. that I need to batch turn on so that I can print.
Here is what I have:
var myFolder = Folder.selectDialog("Select Indesign Folder");
var myIndsnFiles = myFolder.getFiles("*.indd");
for(k=0; k<myIndsnFiles.length; k++)
   var myIndsnFiles = app.open(myIndsnFiles[k]);
var myIndsnFiles = app.documents[0];
var answersLayer = myIndsnFiles.layers.item("us");
answersLayer.visible = false;
    app.activeDocument.close(SaveOptions.yes);
Can you fix/explain what I'm doing wrong?

I got Sergey's Version to work. See below. It's very different than my original. I understood why my original wasn't working, but couldn't figure out how to fix it. I tried inserting Laubender's code into this, but I got the same error as above "Object does not support the property or method 'length'".
I made some adjustments so that the script turns off all layers that should be off, then turns on the layer I need.
Everything runs perfect except I wonder if there's a way I can turn off any warnings, such as missing links, so that it processes the whole batch without pausing. Maybe that's what Laubender was referring to.
var myFolder = Folder.selectDialog("Select Indesign Folder");
if( myFolder != null )
    var myIndsnFiles = myFolder.getFiles("*.indd");
    for( var k = myIndsnFiles.length -1; k >= 0; k--)
        try
            var myDoc = app.open(myIndsnFiles[k]);
var inLayer = myDoc.layers.item("in");
inLayer.visible = false;
var itLayer = myDoc.layers.item("it");
itLayer.visible = false;
var deLayer = myDoc.layers.item("de");
deLayer.visible = false;
var ukLayer = myDoc.layers.item("uk");
ukLayer.visible = false;
var usLayer = myDoc.layers.item("us");
usLayer.visible = false;
var intLayer = myDoc.layers.item("INT");
intLayer.visible = false;
deLayer.visible = true;
            myDoc.close(SaveOptions.yes);
        } catch ( error ) {};// try-catch
    };// for
};// if

Problems copying files btwn two fire wire drives, after one was reformatted

I have two Lacie Firewire drives, I use a 75GB drive at home for my iTunes music folder. Recently I attempted, without success, to share this over LAN to a new mini using share points. In trobleshooting this at the sharepoints website I discovered that sharepoints will not share a firewire drive unless it is formatted OS Extended. The 75 GB firewire drive was never reformatted from its factory defult format (PC Exchange). I brought a 250GB drive (formatted Mac OS Extended) home from work to use as a temporary home for the iTunes music folder while I reformatted the 75GB drive. I copied the iTunes folder from the 75 GB drive. Made a visual check of the folder on the 250GB drive and it was complete ( all the music files are there).
I reformatted the 75Gb drive to Mac OS Extended. And then tried to copy the folder back. It copied about 5OO MB and then stop with the following error message: "The finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "_file name_" could not be read or written. (Error code -36). I checked to see where the copy got to and then checked for the specified file, it was there on the source drive (250GB). I even got it to play with iTunes. But it would not copy. I skipped this file and tried to copy again, but after a short period of success the copy got hung up on another file. Therre appears to be many problem files.
I tried to use iTunes "consolidate libaray" but it hangs up as well.
I called LaCie. Their tech support suggested that I may have some file corruption as a result of copying from a "fat32" fromatted drive, which is what he believes the factory format was, to the Mac OS extended fromat drive. He suggested running another utility to discover any posiible file corruption.
Questions: What are my options on diagnosing this problem? What utilities would best evaluate the condition of the files? Are there ways to fix the files?
Can I remove the library in iTunes, tell it to use the music folder on the 250GB and then rebuild a libarary - will this help or just add another layer of complication to the process?
Is there a way to copy a group of files and skip over any corrupted files? If so can this be done and get a list of skipped files?
If not, do any of the utilites aloow one to identify and isolate bad files in a way that they can be removed from the copying process?
Thanks for any input.
450MHz PowerPC G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Hello Again Gordon Bennet!,
The above was the easy fix for your problem which is an I/O issue.
If you want to live on the edge, AFTER making a backup, are you are familiar with with how to use 'Console'? It's in Applications-Utilties-Console.
If so, can you access the logs and see if the sort of read error that has been logged? It is also possible (although improbable) that the OS logged a detailed message elsewhere.
Good luck and even though not "solved" here in the iSight group, you might try your HD question in Computing Hardware and under your MacMini group to see if anyone has better answer/solution.
Respectfully,
Bill Gallagher

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!

Problem copying some files. Error messages -36 and -50

I'm trying to backup my user folder onto an external LA Cie drive, and some of the files refuse to copy. The files, it seems, are mostly image or mov. files, and there appear to be dozens of "bad" ones, maybe hundreds. Several tens of thousand have no problem copying, but the bad files foul up the entire process.
The error messages I tend to get are as follows:
--"The finder cannot complete the operation because some data in [file name] could not be read or written (error code -36)"
--"The operation cannot be completed because the item [file name] is locked."
--I also get error code -50 sometimes.
Can anyone diagnose this problem and tell me how to fix it?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Todd--
First thing I think I'd try would be to see if a different cable helps. Sometimes a bad cable can cause problems with an external disk. Also, make sure nothing but the drive is connected to the PowerBook.
Second, look at the LaCie web site and see if there's a firmware update for your drive. I found a post on another board where the person had the -50 problem with a LaCie DVD drive that was cured by a firmware update.
The -36 error means there's a disk I/O error:
<pre class="command">ioErr = -36, /*I/O error (bummers)*/</pre>Look in your console log at the time you try to copy one of these files. It might have a line something like this:
<pre class="command">Apr 07 09:00:00 username kernel[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.</pre>The username and disk0s3 parts will change a bit. You can figure out which disk is which using the Terminal application. Just copy and run this command:
<pre class="command">diskutil list</pre>That'll give you the names and BSD identifiers (which is the diskNsN name) for your drive's partition. That should tell you where the actual error is occuring.
As for the -50 error, that's an error in the parameter list. That can be caused by copying Mac files to FAT32 formatted partitions. If your LaCie drive is not formatted as Mac OS Extended, you might come up against this problem, too.
charlie

File Bundle with large number of files failed

Hi!
Well, I thought there will appear problems. We do have some apps for distribution just by copying large amount of files (not large in size) to Windows (XP Pro, usually) machines. These is some programs which works from directory wo any special need for installation. Happy situation for admin. From one side. In ZfD 4.0.1 we did install this app on one of machines and then did take snapshot via special app (who remember) and did copy file to (Netware) server share, give rights for device (~ workstation) and associate it with ws via eDir and ... voila, next restart or whatsoever and app was there. Very nice, indeed, I miss this!
So, I tried to make this happen on ZCM 10 (on SLES 11). Did app, sorry, bundle, upload files (first time it stuck, second time id accomplish, around 7500 files) and did distribution/launch association to ws (~device). And ... got errors. Several entries in log as examples below.
Any ideas?
More thanks, Alar.
Error: [1/8/10 2:41:53 PM] BundleManager BUNDLE.UnknownExceptionOccurred An Unknown exception occurred trying to process task: Novell.Zenworks.AppModule.LaunchException: Exception of type 'Novell.Zenworks.AppModule.LaunchException' was thrown.
at Novell.Zenworks.AppModule.AppActionItem.ProcessAct ion(APP_ACTION launchType, ActionContext context, ActionSetResult previousResults)
Error: [1/8/10 2:41:54 PM] BundleManager ActionMan.FailureProcessingActionException Failed to process action: Information for id 51846d2388c028d8c471f1199b965859 has not been cached. Did you forget to call CacheContentInfo first?

ZCM10 is not efficient in handling that number of files in a single
bundle when they are in the content repo.
Suggestions include zipping the files and uploading to the content repo
and then downloading and extracting the zip as part of the bundle.
Or Use the "Copy Directory" option to copy the files from a Network
Source Directly like you did in ZDM.
On 1/8/2010 8:56 AM, NovAlf wrote:
>
> Hi!
> Well, I thought there will appear problems. We do have some apps for
> distribution just by copying large amount of files (not large in size)
> to Windows (XP Pro, usually) machines. These is some programs which
> works from directory wo any special need for installation. Happy
> situation for admin. From one side. In ZfD 4.0.1 we did install this app
> on one of machines and then did take snapshot via special app (who
> remember) and did copy file to (Netware) server share, give rights for
> device (~ workstation) and associate it with ws via eDir and ... voila,
> next restart or whatsoever and app was there. Very nice, indeed, I miss
> this!
> So, I tried to make this happen on ZCM 10 (on SLES 11). Did app, sorry,
> bundle, upload files (first time it stuck, second time id accomplish,
> around 7500 files) and did distribution/launch association to ws
> (~device). And ... got errors. Several entries in log as examples
> below.
> Any ideas?
> More thanks, Alar.
> ---
> Error: [1/8/10 2:41:53 PM] BundleManager
> BUNDLE.UnknownExceptionOccurred An Unknown exception occurred trying to
> process task: Novell.Zenworks.AppModule.LaunchException: Exception of
> type 'Novell.Zenworks.AppModule.LaunchException' was thrown.
> at Novell.Zenworks.AppModule.AppActionItem.ProcessAct ion(APP_ACTION
> launchType, ActionContext context, ActionSetResult previousResults)
> ---
> Error: [1/8/10 2:41:54 PM] BundleManager
> ActionMan.FailureProcessingActionException Failed to process action:
> Information for id 51846d2388c028d8c471f1199b965859 has not been cached.
> Did you forget to call CacheContentInfo first?
> ---
>
>

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?

Why one group of files takes so long to copy

Hi... I have two different folders full of files that I occasionally backup to another location. Both sets contain approximately 3000 files each. However, what I will call set 1's 3000 files represent about 700 MBytes of data while the 3000 files in set 2 are about half that size at about 350 MBytes.
The vast majority of those files are never changed. Instead, each week perhaps a few kilobytes and maybe 10-20 files might change. When I copy set 2 to its backup location, the copy might take 15 seconds tops. When I copy set 1 to its backup location on the same drive as set 2, the backup takes at least a factor of 10 longer... Maybe more... I could imagine a factor of 2 since there are twice as many MBytes of data in that set 1 but why might it be taking so, so much longer??? I've looked at the file attributes between the two sets and they appear to all be the same.
Even more interesting, if I do the backup for set 2 (the faster one) that I said maybe takes 15 seconds tops, if I immediately do the same thing again, it now takes less than a second meaning that the system seems to know those files have not changed since the previous copy. However, if I do the same with set 1, the second immediate copy takes every bit as long as the first copy just took moments before... It's as if something is telling the Finder to go ahead and recopy ALL of those files every time whether they have changed or not.
Any input on why I might be seeing that??? I care because I also backup these files via an online backup service and that set 1 group of files always takes a ton longer on that service as well. What might cause this???
thanks... bob..

Well, maybe more detail would help but I was trying to keep it simple. There are certain files that I now and then copy into encrypted, sparse disk images and I then backup those encrypted disk images elsewhere. Currently I open the disk images which then shows the files/folders but those might be a few weeks old. I then open the same folders that exist elsewhere on my computer and that's when I use the drag and drop to update what will soon be relocked up into the encrypted disk images.
Sets 1 and 2 as I described them above are just natural groupings of files/folders I once chose those these encrypted disk images wouldn't be incredibly large.
I do have Disk Warrior as somone asked above...
And I don't have Carbon Copy Cloner but I do have its cousin, SuperDuper which I used to backup the entire computer to a backup drive now and then.
And I doubt I'm running into memory problems as this is a new rMBP with 16 GBytes of RAM
I could use SuperDuper to copy these files for me... Might be worth a try... But it's just so curious that one group of files copies in an instant when you copy and then immediately copy again while the second group seems to want to redo the copy every time you request it... It might just be a few funny files in that one group... Interesting...

Problem copying large groups of files

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