HELP PLEASE error code -36

whaddaya know, i have a WD 500G external and i am getting the same error code...

Yeah, I get the same -36 error copying to a Lacie bigger disk FW 2TB, so it's not just Western Digital. The drive worked perfectly for several months. The Lacie FW 500GB disk I've got has been as good as gold for years but I don't do substantial amounts of copying to it now as it's full.

It's exasperating as I can't back up. I thought it might have been a bad FireWire cable, so I dug out a FW400 cable I had floating around and it seemed to settle down for a short while but the problem has reared its' ugly head again. Had this issue with OS 10.4 and 10.5.

I have been having the same issue, only mine is with DVD-Rs. Im trying to transfer a movie project to my external (Firelite 100 GB) and I get that same error code. I get the same message when I try to transfer to my desktop. This has popped up when I try to download audio files. Even more maddening, it isn't a general problem.....it only happens with some files, and for the life of me, I can't figure out what is so special and different about them.

Tony

I encountered this same error while backing up my iPhoto library. I was able to find the exact file causing the error by creating a sparse disk image then dragging the library folder into the image. It was an iterative process as the file copy failed and it reported the name of the problematic file, then I'd find and delete the file, then start over, create a new disk image, copy the folder again, get the name of the next file causing the problem, delete it and start again. Finally the copy successfully completed. I think I caused the two file corruption issues by force quitting iPhoto when it appeared to hang a while back.

Note that in both cases the files were not found in iPhoto. I did a unix find to locate the corrupted files deep in the iPhoto library folder.

Cheers.

ISIGHT was my problem too. I unplugged it and no more error code -36!!! Hurrah!

I am having the exact same problem with my new iMac. I cannot back up .mp4 files to an external LaCie 500GB drive. Seems OK with other file formats so far. Some .mp4s will back up, then the "-36" Finder error message comes up. I have run "verify disk" and "repair disk." I used the same external hard drive recently with a Windows machine with no problems. I tried changing the external to a Mac format, and the problem got worse; when I formatted again as MS-DOS, it was better. I have the external hard drive connected by USB and it mounts and is recognized normally by my iMac in every other way. Maybe I just need to reformat the .mp4s with another codec? Is this a bug in the Finder that Apple needs to address with an update? Please help. Thanks.

Western Digital 500 owner and getting the same error code-36.

So not cool.

How is it that I'm able to use almost 130 GB worth of space and just now I get this error???

Hi I also have this problem. I have a 2TB WD mybook pro.
But I've also had the problem with a Maxtor disc.

Well, one of my users is getting this error when trying to connect to a Windows server. Is this related? He can connect to one Windows server fine, but when he tries the other one he gets this error. "The Finder cannot complete the operation because some of the date in smb://<server name or IP addr> could not be read or written. (Error code -36)"

Both Windows servers are on the same subnet, which is different from the client machine.

Any suggestions?

TIA
Paul Baughman

I have the same problem. After installing 10.5 it was still ok first to access the windows server. But since some weeks I cannot access it any longer