can't copy files to external hard drive

OHM51 -
Thanks for posting, but this didn't hold any answer.

The suggestion to format the drive without case-sensitivity is exactly how i know the drive is formatted without case-sensitivity... as in, when I ran into the issue initially the VERY first thing that I did was I erased the drive and reformatted it in disk utils.

Additionally, if you are familiar with Disk Utility, you know You can't format the drive with case sensitivity unless you drag down the list and select case-sensitivity. Sooooo... again I am certain of the volume format.

Finally, you mention that you know of no way to tell how a drive is formatted. You should take a further look at the get info screen. The fourth item in the list is the drive format, and if the drive is formatted with case sensitivity it would indicate here. Try it out with a thumb drive or something and you'll see this.

Cheers, and thanks again for your follow up. My third party band-aid/"who is this windows" comment previously wasn't meant to offend anyone. There is a very valid concern I have for the attention to pro-apps and OS based support issues. I hope my comment is viewed for what it is! A concern from a loyal customer who doesn't want Apple to go down the road they some time seem to be headed towards!!

Ah Ha!

A solution!!

This was a successful workaround to the problem,
Thank You SMDS!

You aren't the only one with this issue. It has only happened to my clients with Leopard workstations, but a Tiger server, and when copying over our network.

This problem is as you have laid it out: copying to an EMPTY folder, and the Finder coughs up that the file already exists so it will not copy the file. Yet when one looks at the process, the file begins to copy (and at that time, the Finder creates a file with the same name on the remote volume), and then coughs up the error. It is as if the Finder cannot pay attention to what it is doing, or there is some kind of timing lag between when the directories are written and the file is actually copied.

Exceedingly frustrating, and we have not found a proper correction for this issue. Troubling usually when one is trying to copy large groups of files. Compression/decompression will not be a viable option for folders containing many Gb of data. Restarting the machine sometimes will clear things out, but not always. File copying is clearly a mess now.

I have seen where when directories are partially munged, cleaning them up on both volumes (with DiscWarrior, Drive Genius, or Disk Utility) can make the issue go away. Odd and painful issue.

Message was edited by: Paul Vail