Error code 36 when trying to copy files on external SSD

Question

Level 1

4 points

Error code 36 when trying to copy files on external SSD

So I got this trouble.

— Macbook Air M1 on 13.4 Ventura.

— External 1TB Sandisk SSD with APFS file system.

Trying to copy files on external disc, ~25GB and ~2600 files and this problem occurs on random file. Try this many times, every time «problem» file is different. After this message disc starts to be much slower. Also can't unmount it not in Force mode.

I read articles about this and tried:

— Formatted it as NTFS and tried on Windows notebook. Works OK.

— Changed USB cables and ports.

— Use dot_clean command.

— Use Safe Mode. Nothing changes.

— Checked all my files — read/write permissions everywhere.

— Disable Spotlight indexing for my external drive.

Any suggestions?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.4

Posted on Jul 2, 2023 9:14 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

118,532 points

Jul 3, 2023 6:43 AM in response to outlaw_geek

outlaw_geek wrote:

So I got this trouble.

— Macbook Air M1 on 13.4 Ventura.

— External 1TB Sandisk SSD with APFS file system.

Trying to copy files on external disc, ~25GB and ~2600 files and this problem occurs on random file. Try this many times, every time «problem» file is different. After this message disc starts to be much slower. Also can't unmount it not in Force mode.

I wouldn't use Finder to try to copy that many files.

Use one of the Unix copy commands in Terminal, such as ditto, to copy all of those files. Or, break up the copy into smaller chunks.

Error -36 is a I/O error where it probably cannot write, but it could be that it couldn't read the file. When you search for it you will only find irrelevant information dealing with metadata. Since your drive is APFS, the auxiliary metadata files are not the problem. I think you are just running into a Finder limitation. It could be the .DS_Store files, but I don't think Finder copies hidden files.