I’m trying to backup my photo library to an external drive. The brand new drive is formatted OSX Extended Journaled. My photos library is 330GB. I get about 36GB into the copy and it fails with a -36 error code. I have tried the dot_clean fix and it didn’t help. Any ideas?
iMac 21.5", 10.13
error -36 is an I/O error and can occur, if one of the files has a problematic filename - either the name is too long or contains characters, that are not alphanumeric.
You can try to copy the the library in smaller blocks.
to open the Photos Library package and to copy the sub folder individually. Try to copy the library in parts. This way, you are able to identify the culprit that is causing the I/O error and can skip it, when copying: Be very careful not to modify the original library when you try this.
Create a new folder on your external drive. Call it "Photos Library Copy".
Ctrl-click (or right-click) your current Photos Library and use the command "Show Package Contents". This will open a folder, showing you the files and folders inside your Photos Library.
Copy these folders one-by-one to to the new folder on your external drive. If one of these folders is giving an error -36, check how far the copying proceeded. The files, that have been copied, are o.k. The file or folder, that should have been copied next will be the unreadable file. Probably the problem is caused by one of the files in "Masters" or a database folder. In that case look into the Masters folder and copy as much as you can, while leaving out the file that will not copy.
When you are done, rename the copy of your Photos Library to "Photos Library Copy.photoslibrary" and double click it to open it in Photos. Can Photos open this library?
The brand new drive is formatted OSX Extended Journaled
Is one of the drives perhaps formatted case-sensitive and the other not?
error -36 is an I/O error and can occur, if one of the files has a problematic filename - either the name is too long or contains characters, that are not alphanumeric.
You can try to copy the the library in smaller blocks.
to open the Photos Library package and to copy the sub folder individually. Try to copy the library in parts. This way, you are able to identify the culprit that is causing the I/O error and can skip it, when copying: Be very careful not to modify the original library when you try this.
Create a new folder on your external drive. Call it "Photos Library Copy".
Ctrl-click (or right-click) your current Photos Library and use the command "Show Package Contents". This will open a folder, showing you the files and folders inside your Photos Library.
Copy these folders one-by-one to to the new folder on your external drive. If one of these folders is giving an error -36, check how far the copying proceeded. The files, that have been copied, are o.k. The file or folder, that should have been copied next will be the unreadable file. Probably the problem is caused by one of the files in "Masters" or a database folder. In that case look into the Masters folder and copy as much as you can, while leaving out the file that will not copy.
When you are done, rename the copy of your Photos Library to "Photos Library Copy.photoslibrary" and double click it to open it in Photos. Can Photos open this library?
The brand new drive is formatted OSX Extended Journaled
Is one of the drives perhaps formatted case-sensitive and the other not?
Wow you were right. I’m still copying files, but it’s actualy happening.
Turns out that the first time I did as you directed, I’m assuming my slow computer wasn’t done reading the “masters” folder so it didn’t copy any of it over when I dragged it over. When I tried again today, it took about a minute for the “masters” folder to appear when I selected “show package contents.”
So I started dragging folders over and got hung up again in an old folder in “masters.” Turns out there were three old flip phone .avi files, of my son as a baby, that must be corrupted somehow because they won’t play and they freeze my computer. I removed them from the folder and then everything has so far continued to copy over to my drive.
The photos should have been a a subfolder of the library called "Masters". Did the Masters folder copy over?
Well I followed your directions exactly and I had no problems copying all of the files shown on “show package contents.” It only took a minute actually. Unfortunately it seems like only the folder structure of my library copied over and none of the actual photos. My photo library is 337 GB and after I copied it all over to the external drive, it was only 2.6GB. Once I renamed it and opened it, all of my folders were there but none of the actual photos. It opens and performs like the Photos application, but all of the folders are empty.
This sounds like a great solution. I’ll certainly give it a try this weekend. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Good Luck!
Oh. I did run into another problem though. While copying the “database” folder from the Photos library, I got another 36 error code. It says it can’t copy “RKVersion_searchIndexText.skindex.”
Error #36 when copying photo library.
