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Error code -50 when moving files from external HDD to new Mac Air

I am still trying to move from my windows desktop to my new M1 Mac Air. I have about 1.8tb of home movie video files that kept on an external HDD I used with the old windows desktop. It is a 2tb external HDD formatted as NTSF with a USB 2.0 connection. I bought a new larger external HDD with USB 3 connection that I want to use for external storage with my new laptop.


I'm using a Caldigit Thunderbolt 3 hub to connect both drives to the the new Air. I can see the video files on the old HDD but when I try to move them from the old drive to the new one I get error code it tells me an unexpected error occurred with -50 error code.


I have spent hours searching online for a way to get these files transferred. It seems to be a common problem but there doesn't seem to be much help about what to do to solve it, most hits are from years ago and when I search the Apple communities most hits are about iPads and iPhones. I've used the disk utility to check the drive and it is fine. I've unmounted the drives, shut down, started up and reconnected but that didn't solve anything. Another piece of advice is to rename the file, but this is a huge folder with hundreds of files and I have no idea what file is causing this. When I try to start the move I get the error immediately, nothing is transferred.


I'm hoping someone can give me some help.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.1

Posted on Feb 1, 2021 11:14 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 4, 2021 2:46 PM

In case someone does a search on this error in the future I decided to come back and explain one solution to this problem. After trying and searching for quite a while with no success I changed my approach.


  1. Bought a new external hard drive.
  2. Formatted it as exFAT using my Mac Air. That is important, when I formatted it on my window PC I still got the error.
  3. Went back to my windows PC and copied my files from the old external drive to the new hard drive
  4. Plugged in the new hard drive to my new MacBook and all the files are there, accessible and ready to be used.


exFAT is a file format that both windows and Macs can read and write to.

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4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 4, 2021 2:46 PM in response to KLC3751

In case someone does a search on this error in the future I decided to come back and explain one solution to this problem. After trying and searching for quite a while with no success I changed my approach.


  1. Bought a new external hard drive.
  2. Formatted it as exFAT using my Mac Air. That is important, when I formatted it on my window PC I still got the error.
  3. Went back to my windows PC and copied my files from the old external drive to the new hard drive
  4. Plugged in the new hard drive to my new MacBook and all the files are there, accessible and ready to be used.


exFAT is a file format that both windows and Macs can read and write to.

Error code -50 when moving files from external HDD to new Mac Air

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