From the OP
neoweapon wrote:
I'm trying to backup a directory with 50 GB of files and every time I do, I would get this error about 15 mins into copying...
"cannot copy xxxxxxx to the destination because its name is the same as the name of an item on the destination, except for the "
case of some characters"
Then from:
rob@asg wrote:
I have the same problem when trying to back up files from our xsan to firewire drives. We ran into this error upon transferring files when we were upgrading our existing san's storage pool to include two new promise arrays... we used terminal to copy the files, to get out of that rut but now as we are trying to archive our pre-2008 stuff we're getting the error messages again, all over the place. it's a little rediculous.. furthermore the error message is meaningless, except for a few characters.
I have been following this thread with due attention as I had been encountering similar problems when copying files to an external firewire disk ... although I was not getting the exact same error message, so I can certainly empathize with the frustration; and agree that Apples error messages are often blatantly stupid to the point of being nearly incomprehensible.
How could a similarly named file (except for a few characters) prevent a copy??? Why don't i get the error when trying to copy a file "filename1.gif" into a folder that contains a file named "filename2.gif"?? These are file names that actually are the same, except for a few characters.
Ah ... no ..."filename1.gif" and "filename2.gif" are NOT the same when considering the numbering convention. So this must be 'something" different ... and that difference (or similarity, as it were) could only be accounted to differences in
"Case".
"cannot copy xxxxxxx to the destination *_because its name is the same_* as the name of an item on the destination, *_except for the case_* of some characters"
So the answer is clear ... who ever named the files on your source drive has inadvertently named certain files similarly within the same directory, easily done with files of that size. Now, how that was done originally without encountering an error message is a bit perplexing.
rob@asg wrote:
Again, the drive i am copying into is empty - case sensitivity has nothing to do with my situation as there are no files on the target disk to begin with. Neither the Xsan or the GRaids are formatted for Case-Sensitivity... they are normal Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions.
Please take no offense Rob ... but are you indeed certain of THAT ???
I only ask as I have no method to verify how a drive is identified when it has been formatted to include a Case-Sensitive file system. Could it be that it does not display in "Get Info' from the Finder, but would reveal that within Disk Utility's "Get Info" pane ?
So I should just buy a third party bandaid because the developers of the os won't acknowledge the fact that an issue exists?? Who am I dealing with here... Microsoft??!!??>
Sorry about the problems you've encountered, but at this point waiting for Apple (to do anything or not) will not resolve the current problem.
The way I see it is that you have a series of bad or better choices.
1. You can go through the entire 50 Gigs of files manually to try to isolate the problem files, and then rename them.
2. You can re-format the destination drive to indeed be Case-Sensitive ... and avoid the error message and preserve the similarly named files.
3. Use a third party utility to do the copying that might identify and or sandbox the specific problematic files.
Going through the entire drive manually seems insane, and if you want to Boot the backup or Restore system files from it ... changing the file structure on the target destination volume might create more problems later on; but if THAT is NOT a concern (and the backup is to simply get the stuff off of the server into an archive as data), well then format the target volume as Case-Sensitive to allow the transfer.
If neither of the above are acceptable, and you decide on the third option, I have 2 recommendations.
Lacie's Silverkeeper v2 is free and has been recently updated to be compatible with Mac OS 10.5.5.
http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/
I haven't used this version myself so I can't attest to its feature set.
Then there is a fully featured commercial utility from Prosoft Engineering, the folks that developed Drive Genius and Data Rescue, offer Data Backup 3; this one I have used and do highly recommend it for its ease of use and it has a really stellar feature set.
I got it free with a drive I purchased through OWC ... an offer that is still available btw, so if you anticipate a need for other drives in the near future ... ???
Data Backup 3
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_backup.php
Hope your problem gets resolved expeditiously, if it hasn't already.
Ohm51