Trying to copy an item to usb drive gives error item is busy

I purchased an iomega 500gb external usb drive for my powermac G4 mirror doors but it was unusably slow due to the mac only having usb 1.
Today I purchased a Belkin 5 port PCI USB 2 card and connected it up.
The Mac recognised the card immediately and the drive when connected. It will play videos that are already on the drive but when I try to copy a video on the computer to the drive it refuses to copy saying that the item is busy.
I really need to copy about 200GB of dv files to the drive for backup so any suggestions please - Thanks

Some (most?) USB drives come formatted to FAT32.
Reformat it (Disk Utility Partitions, and click on "Options..." also)
Or get a FireWire drive that would be bootable as well, and faster (and much much lower cpu overhead).

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Getting "resource busy" when trying to copy from an external USB drive

Hi, I have an external (Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1.5TB) USB drive attached to my MacBook Pro (2009) running 10.6. I am trying to copy the files back to my laptop. However, when I copy them in the Finder, I get a message saying that some of the files are "in use". So I even tried copying using Terminal, and often I get this kind of message:
$ cp -pr /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01\ Legoland /Users/Andy/Desktop/m
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 14;38;18: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 14;41;40: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;03;24: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;04;03: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;13;21: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;14;16: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;15;40: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;16;23: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;17;19: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;51;14: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;51;42: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;51;50: Resource busy
cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/clip-2008-06-01 15;53;34: Resource busy
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cp: /Volumes/Movies/2008-06-01 Legoland/iMovie Thumbnails/iMovie Cache/Cache.plist: Resource busy
After this happens, when I do "ls /Volumes/MyDriveName" I get zero results, nothing. I cannot unmount or eject the USB drive. I have to physically kill power to it, and then plug it back in. Then my MBP recognizes it again, and I can work with it for a short time before I hit this problem again. Copying some files works, but mostly they do not. I hope I have not lost these files.
I ran Disk Utility, and it can't do anything with this drive... it keeps saying it cannot unmount it.
Oddly, I can "ls" every file in every directory on this drive after I reconnect it (i.e. until the problem happens). So it seems like my data is sort of there, at least the directory is.
Is there something more robust than Disk Utility that I can try? Any idea why I cannot eject the disk? And especially, what this "Resource busy" and "in use" message is about? This is coming straight after a reboot, and it only happens for SOME files, so it's not likely to be an obvious usage by some open app.

Hmm, check out this program http://www.hamsoftengineering.com/products/wkm/wkm.html ... it might lead to some more clues. It seems like as soon as you plug it in, the system latches onto it. I'm guessing because it's an iMovie file, which OS X scans for, so all applications have the ability to grab that media that it's messing things up.
Suggestions...copy those files, and rename them.
Check out the app above to see what's holding onto the files.
Check me out over at www.itarsenal.com for some remote control support on the house if you still need help.

I cannot get my iTunes library from my old computer to my new one. The old computer is so messed up that I cannot even get google to open. I tried to copy to an external hard drive and the music was there until I went to upload to the new computer.

I cannot get my iTunes library/music from my old computer to my new one. The old computer is so messed up that I cannot even open a browser.I tried to copy to an external hard drive and the music was there until I went to upload to the new computer. I disconnected my old computer so I will have to reconnect it I am sure. thank you for any help. Last time I transferred I used a product I purchased. That was a long time ago.

First of all make sure that you've definitely backed up the movies to your external hard disc.
In iMovie click on any event you don't want, go to the file menu and select 'move event to trash'. Then do the same for any unwanted projects - 'move project to trash'. Quit out of iMovie and empty the trash.
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Hi
Hoping for some help with a problem I appreciate others have faced.
I bought a new video camera recently and have just tried to copy the AVI files from the first few videos to my mac but am getting the error code 36 that states the files cannot be read or written.
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BDAqua wrote:
I hear 3rd Party, or HW Raid 0/1/5/10 are OK, but 6 months is the absolute most I got out of my many screaming RAID setups before they completely lost it!
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So have you clicked through to copy them to see if any are missing? It may only indicate that there are some invisibles it cannot copy.
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[email protected]

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I have done many DVD's for seniors for graduation so I am familier with Imovie. I have just finished a projec that is a combination of video, music and stills. I shared it through idvd. Now I can't burn it to a dvd because it is too large. It is too big even for a two sided disk. I have researched it and i find that blue ray would be big enough. Does apple offer blue ray burner? if so, what is the cost? I tried another route and took my external hard drive to copy it to a PC. there computer wouldn't recongize my drive. I am assuming it is because it is formated for apple. I tired copying it to a flash drive and and it says that it can't be copied because it is too large for the volume's format. Suggestions? PLEASE!!!!!

Could the video be too big because of using too high a resolution? 480p is sufficient for a DVD. the thread at:
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Gary,
A couple of posts referencing "error -50" seem to indicate that the error could result from a corrupted file.
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Error -50 Post
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Hi,
I've created a playlist of tracks which I want to load via USB stick into my car.
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thx

Drag the tracks from iTunes to the stick drive. This will put them on the drive in whatever format they are in iTunes. Not all car players play AAC format so you may need to convert them to mp3 in iTunes and then drag those files to the stick drive.
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iTunes: How to convert a song to a different file format - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1550 - including information about different formats and discussion about compression.

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I have check my WD My book on another computer and thankfully all mmedia is still in tack!
How can i quit this copying so i can shut down my computer?
Any ideas as to why items are not copying to external memories and what if anything can i do to get it copying correctly again?
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option discovered in preferences. Really this and any feature that moves deletes or edits a users data should as far as possible be OFF BY DEFAULT. It shouldn't by default and without the users specific say do this dangerous and unnecessary thing without even letting the user know what it's doing!!! And then cause me a few hours (as i'm new to mac) searching for the option so as to switch it off. If i hadn't noticed the status cage declaring that it was copying files then i might never have twigged that this insane thing was occurring. And if i hadn't of noticed i would have been left maintaining the contents of the folder i copied the files to, the folder which as far as i was informed and so believed was also the location of the music files i was playing. How does Apple justify this 'genius' piece of software non-design? Surely it will hurt no one if this was off by default for new users - overall at least i dare say it would cause a lot less distress in the future for the unsuspecting public at large. Thanks for the support.

Windows 7 64-bit Copying files to external usb drive - files becomes corrupted.

Hi All,
I am getting intermittent problem with regards to copying files to usb external hard drive from my laptop.
When file is copied to external drive, the file becomes corrupt from the external drive.
I have to repeat around 2 to 3 times or more to re-copy the file again until file is not corrupted.
Appreciate of any help.
Below is my system info:
Using Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit 4 gb of ram.
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name GIBBY-LAPTOP
System Manufacturer Sony Corporation
System Model VGN-SR26GN_B
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8400 @ 2.26GHz, 2267 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. R1130Y1, 8/28/2009
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Gibby-Laptop\Gibby
Time Zone Malay Peninsula Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.97 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.60 GB
Total Virtual Memory 7.93 GB
Available Virtual Memory 6.05 GB
Page File Space 3.97 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Ok, lets be brief.
This problem is annoying me for years. It is totally reproducible although random. It happens when copying to external drives (mainly USB) when they are configured for "safe removal". I have had issues copying to NTFS and FAT32 partitions. I have
had issues using 4 different computers, from 7 years old to brand new ones, using AMD or intel chipsets and totally different USB controllers, and using many different USB sticks, hard disks, etc. The only common thing in those computers is Windows 7 x64 and
the external drives optimization for "safe removal". Installing Teracopy reduces the chances of data corrpution, but does not eliminate them completely. The only real workaround (tested for 2 years) is activating the write cache in the device manager
properties of the drive. In that way, windows uses the same transfer mechanisms as for the internal drives, and everything is OK.
MICROSOFT guys, there is a BIG BUG in windows 7 x64 external drives data transfer mechanism. There is a bug in the cache handling mechanism of the safe removal function. Nobody hears, I've been years talking about this in forums. It is a very dangerous bug
because it is silent, and many non professional people is experiencing random errors in their backup data. PLEASE, INVESTIGATE THIS. YOU NEED TO FIX SUCH IMPORTANT BUG. IT IS UNBELIEVABLE THAT IT IS STILL THERE SINCE 2009!!!
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Trying to copy backups.backupdb to another drive

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Disk Utility gave me the same advice and I got the same caution about ownership.
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Trying to copy an item to usb drive gives error item is busy

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