Error: There is a problem with the file and it cannot be copied

Question

Error: There is a problem with the file and it cannot be copied

I've been trying to copy (and essentially move) the contents of an NTFS-formatted external HDD to my iMac's internal HDD so I can then format the external HDD to Mac OS Extended. However, when I simply try to drag and drop, I get an error during the transfer that states:

There is a problem with the file and it cannot be copied.

I tried a basic cp command in Terminal to copy all contents of the external HDD to a folder on my iMac's desktop, and found that while there were no errors, there were many individual files missing full chunks of data (ie. original file would be 4GB on my external HDD, but only 350MB on my desktop).

Any ideas on how I can successfully copy a large amount of data (approx. 170GB) from my external HDD to my internal HDD while avoiding this error, so I can ultimately format my external HDD to Mac OS Extended? ANY help is greatly appreciated.

iMac 24", Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Mar 12, 2009 11:40 PM

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Answer 1

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Mar 13, 2009 3:47 AM in response to Pierce Selman

You need to use Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities/) to repair the external drive. I suspect it has some problems, hopefully within the ability of Disk Utility to fix. Since it's not your boot drive, there's no need to restart from your Mac OS X install disk as there would be if you wanted to repair your boot drive.

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Answer 2

Mar 13, 2009 9:57 AM in response to thomas_r.

I ran the repair using Disk Utility as you suggested - it found some things and seemed to correct them according to the log. I went ahead and tried again to drag and drop the files I'm interested in copying, and this time I was presented with the following error:

The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "MP3" could not be read or written. (Error code -36)

MP3 being one of the folders I'm trying to copy - there was an error appearing before this one mentioning the specific file it encountered issues with, but it plays just fine in iTunes from beginning to end. Any other ideas? I really appreciate your response by the way.

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Answer 3

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Mar 13, 2009 10:59 AM in response to Pierce Selman

That's not a good error to see. It indicates something is very wrong. Pulled out of an old programming header file:

ioErr = -36, /*I/O error (bummers)*/

If Apple labelled it "bummers," they had a good reason! Unfortunately, that doesn't bode well for you.

Try running Disk Utility again. Keep repairing over and over until one of two things happens: 1) Disk Utility says no repair was needed, or 2) Disk Utility reports the same error in two sequential repair sessions and is unable to repair it both times.

If you hit the second case, or if you hit the first but still can't copy files, then you've got two basic options:

= Buy a third-party disk utility or two and try them. Try TechTool as a first choice.

= Recover what files you can and write the rest off as gone.

= Send your drive to a data recovery service and hope they can extract more than you can.

Of course, none of this is necessary if you have a backup of the contents of that hard drive. (If you don't, this is your learning experience. Once bitten, twice shy, so they say.) Also, regardless of the outcome, once you've got your data or have decided it's gone, you're going to want to wipe that drive completely clean. Reformat the drive with Disk Utility, then when it's done, select the drive in Disk Utility and hit command-i. (Don't select the new volume you just created on that drive, select the drive itself. Mine looks like "232.9 GB Hitachi ..." with the volume name indented underneath.) Look for an item that says S.M.A.R.T. Status, and if it doesn't say Verified, you might as well throw out the drive. Don't trust any more data to it.

If all appears safe, you can start moving data back onto it. But, as always, make sure you have a backup of everything!

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Answer 4

Mar 16, 2009 11:14 AM in response to thomas_r.

After following your advice and running the Disk Utility repair function a few dozen times, I've got it to the point where it claims to be correcting a couple of the same items each time I run it:

Verify and Repair volume "EXTERNAL"
Verifying files...
Files verification completed.
Verifying meta files...
Meta files verification completed.
Verifying $AttrDef.
Verifying $Boot.
Verifying $UpCase.
$UpCase file is formatted for use in Windows NT/2K/XP
Verifying $LogFile.
Verifying $Volume.
Verifying folders...
Correcting error in index 0x30 ($I30) for file 0x7943.
Folders verification completed.
Verifying $MFT.
Verifying $MFTMirr.
Correcting $MFTMirr data.
Verifying $Bitmap.

Unfortunately for me, my attempts to copy files from my external HDD are still met with -36 errors. Also, I've looked up other software such as TechTool and DiskWarrior, but found they do not support NTFS drives.

The thing I don't quite understand is these particular files that are deemed problematic by Finder can still be read and written to without issues. Logic tells me if I can read and write to these files, I must be able to copy them too, no?

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Answer 5

Mar 16, 2009 4:04 PM in response to Pierce Selman

I'm surprised you have gotten your NTFS drive to communicate with your machine in OS X at all.
I've actually never been able to achieve this. FAT32 drives can operate within OS X, however, you cannot transfer individual files that are over 4GB in size (a limitation of FAT 32 within OS X) or aggregate transfers of more than 30 GB.
Perhaps you can transfer them to another drive formatted in FAT 32, considering these limitations. And then from the FAT 32 drive to OS X

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Answer 6

KJK555

Level 4

2,900 points

Mar 16, 2009 5:05 PM in response to Pierce Selman

The drive probably needed repair, but DU is the wrong tool to do it with, you should use windows
chkdsk instead.

The best thing to save those files to are disk images or another NTFS drive.

Open Disk Utility, select: File > New > disk image from Folder > select the NTFS Drive icon as the
folder > save as read/write image somewhere on your mac drive.
Before restoring it to another NTFS drive, covert the image to read only.

You will need Paragon NTFS or NTFS-3g to restore those files unless you restore them to a Fat32
drive. If you want to transfer some or all of those files from your image directly to a Mac formated
drive I suggest transferring them using the terminal.app and the "cp" (copy command) with the -X
switch (gets rid of the windows extended attributes) so they will be compatible with the Mac File
System.
example of cp command in terminal: (copy files from folder inside mounted disk image to a folder
inside your home directory)
cp -R -X "/Volumes/NTFS_Backup/Program Files" " ~/mydata/windows/data"

Personally, I prefer the ditto command over the cp command for copying directories and entire
drives. attributes can be filtered on ditto also. See "man ditto" in terminal for details.

Kj

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Answer 7

Mar 17, 2009 9:00 PM in response to KJK555

Chkdsk worked! Of course it makes sense to use Windows utilities on an NTFS-formatted drive. Thanks to all for your input, and especially KJ for your solution, I really appreciate it.

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