Finder not copying all files to Memory Stick

Question

Finder not copying all files to Memory Stick

Over the last few days I've been transferring files from my Macbook Pro to my Sony PSP's Memory Stick Pro Duo. When simply copying a large amount of files only, they won't all transfer. So if I transfter 100 items to the card, it'll show 100 items on the memory stick before copying but once finished the number will be around 97 (they're about 1MB each).

I've searched the interwebs and found a few other users complaining of the issue even when transferring only 15 items. They too were using Sony products. So the question is, what the heck is going on? Is there an issue with finder copying to Memory sticks? Finder in general? Does it matter if the files are locked? Sure hope I haven't lost any pictures I've transferred from my SD cards etc.

I should also point out that if I re-copy the 100 items and paste them to my Memory Stick, choosing NO when prompted to replace files with the same name, I'll get my missing files.

Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

uMBP 13, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jun 10, 2011 9:12 AM

Reply

Answer 1

babowa

Level 9

78,568 points

Jun 10, 2011 9:20 AM in response to TestyTesterson

What's the capacity of your memory stick? Whatever it is, there is certain file info that needs to be there which means if it's advertised as having 100 MB, the actual space available will be somewhat less (plus it has to do with how MB and GB are actually counted which is an entirely different subject). So, you could be running out of room?

Also, since that is not self powered and draws all it needs from the USB port, it's best not to tranfer large files all at once, but do it incrementally.

Reply

Answer 2

Jun 10, 2011 9:22 AM in response to TestyTesterson

Apple and Sony have always been pretty at war with eachother. Most Sony items don't go well with Mac stuff, other than headphones, or something of that sort.

Reply

Answer 3

babowa

Level 9

78,568 points

Jun 10, 2011 9:25 AM in response to wastedweekends

Good point..... however, transferring files should work?

Reply

Answer 4

Jun 10, 2011 9:27 AM in response to babowa

It's a 4GB Sony-made stick, from the high-speed family, so I'm assuming it's high quality. I was only transferring around 100-300MB of data and had 2 gigs free before hand (so definitely not a space issue). I've tried this with all different amounts of files and always notice 1-5 missing after the transfer.

PSP was in USB connect mode and both devices were plugged into a power source.

Reply

Answer 5

Jun 10, 2011 9:29 AM in response to babowa

Yes there's absolutely no reason why this should be happening. I just spoke to my buddy (we both run an IT department) and he noticed this while transferring images from his Canon Camera (SD card) to his Mac. He went into the finder afterwards to grab a file and it wasn't there so he had to re-copy it.

Reply

Answer 6

babowa

Level 9

78,568 points

Jun 10, 2011 10:43 AM in response to TestyTesterson

Well, I'm not sure what the problem would be with the SD card - I have two Canon cameras and several SDHC cards (which came with a special high speed reader) and have never had a problem with them since I got the high speed reader. The old reader I have cannot keep up with the high speeds, so it may have something to do with the reader.

Reply

Answer 7

Jun 13, 2011 8:16 AM in response to babowa

Had my buddy run some tests as well and we found the same issue copying files to a USB thumbdrive and a mounted camera (SD card). Would copy around 128 files averaging 1-3MB and not all would copy. Tried it with ebooks as well - same result. Both computers were running snow leopard - one was a Macbook Pro mid 2009 and the other a 2011 Macbook Air.

Transferring TO the computer seemed okay. Not sure about copying to an external hard drive (ran out of time). But copying to flash memory seemed to create issues. What the heck?

Reply

Answer 8

Jun 15, 2011 11:43 AM in response to TestyTesterson

Ok went simple this time and took a typical usb thumbdrive (8 gig freshly formatted) and copied 77 MP3's from my hard drive to the thumb drive's root directory. Only 75 went.

Can someone try this out? So far all computers I've tested this on have shown the same behaviour.

Reply

Answer 9

babowa

Level 9

78,568 points

Jun 15, 2011 5:12 PM in response to TestyTesterson

I'd test it, but I do not own any thumb drives - I prefer the far more reliable self powered and firewire hard drives. I do own a 160 GB USB external hard drive for mobility, but that's for temporary storage only.

I do have a question though: you said "freshly formatted" and copied to "root directory" - what do you mean by root directory? If the dirve is formatted for Mac, there should be nothing on there and you simply drag 'n drop. How did you format the drive?

Reply

Answer 10

Jun 16, 2011 11:38 AM in response to babowa

I've going to test on another wide variety of Macs over the next couple of days and then excalate this with Apple so they're aware of the issue (if it can be reproduced). Seems pathedic to have an issue like this on the so called "world's most advance operating system).

To answer your question, I simply meant I dragged and dropped the files right onto the USB key, not into any folders. Hence why I said root. I.E. the parent directory. It's a simple Fat32 format. There's no issues with anything there so it can be removed as a variable (and I've tried multiple keys and flash storage mediums - SD, CF, Memory Stick, etc.).

Actually, I'll try formatting it as HFS+ and see if I get the same errors.

Reply

Answer 11

babowa

Level 9

78,568 points

Jun 16, 2011 1:32 PM in response to TestyTesterson

It's a simple Fat32 format.

By golly, I believe you might have answered your own question (make note to myself: first question: how is drive formatted?)!

I have absolutely no idea about Fat32. I don't run Windows. The drive should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and, if you want it bootable, it needs to be formatted with the GUID partition scheme.

Reply

Answer 12

Jun 16, 2011 4:58 PM in response to babowa

No it shouldn't be. Most drives are configured for universal access, which is Fat32 since NTFS/Windows doesn't play nice with OSX/HFS+. All my cameras and game systems, once formatted by the device itself, become Fat32 setups (typically). In my case I require this, but I'll format it as HFS+ Journaled tonight and see what happens. Either way it's inexcusable for this to happen and when I get a proper report done I'll pass it off to the technical team at Apple to look at.

Thanks for helping though, I appreciate your suggestions. It's too bad no one else has chimed in with their thoughts. I'll do more testing with whatever computers and drives I can find.

Reply

Answer 13

babowa

Level 9

78,568 points

Jun 16, 2011 5:25 PM in response to TestyTesterson

It's too bad no one else has chimed in with their thoughts.

I agree - what that usually means is that no one has encountered the same issue and/or doesn't have any helpful suggestions.....

As I said, I know nothing about Fat32, but am guessing that it possibly requires a larger directory and so you wind up with less usable space?

Here is a link to one thread regarding a similar problem (I found several here searching):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1913331?answerId=9030578022#9030578022

Reply

Answer 14

josh_909

Level 1

5 points

Jun 29, 2011 10:01 AM in response to TestyTesterson

chiming in...

I've got the same problem with some guys I work with. They are copying large amounts of video files from various external drives sent to us by various customers. They regularly receive these, could be 5 a day (more or less), and use a mac pro (snow leopard) to copy files onto a windows 2008 R2 file server (15 TB volume). These external drives are usually USB (but also e-sata and firewire) and are usually 500GB or larger. I see alot of Lacie's 1TB and 2TB externals floating around them, but there are various brands.

Sometimes these data transfers of 200GB or more are only 10 files...

They have been complaining about dragging over 10 files, with finder, getting a 'successful' outcome, no errors...But when they go to check the files on the server, they may only see 6 or 7. Then they drag the missing ones over and maybe 1 or 2 will still be missing after that. It's not always consistent, sometimes they complete fine.

We are using NTFS on the file server end, alot of these external drives come NTFS formatted, some mac formatted, maybe even a linux one here and there.

I first thought it was the external drives, then the mac. But didn't find much there in my testing. Then I thought it was the file server (windows), because of 15TB volume only has 1TB free...But now that I've found this, I wonder if a recent update to OSX has cause this. This thread isn't very old...I first started hearing about this problem from my guys about a month ago.

Josh

Reply

Answer 15

Jun 30, 2011 9:46 AM in response to josh_909

Thanks for the feedback, Josh. Everyone I've had do this so far has noticed the bug. I have more itneresting notes to add to this:

1) Reformatting the drive as Fat32 in OSX does nothing to correct the problem.

2) Reformatting the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) WORKS. Everytime. This isn't a solution but it's interesting to note. Way to error check, Apple.

Reply