Cannot Copy Files To External Drives

Question

groberts1980 Author

Level 1

22 points

Cannot Copy Files To External Drives

I can no longer drag and drop files to USB or network share drives. I drag the files over, the little green + appears, and drop, but the file does not copy. I can open up Word, type a few random characters and do a "save as..." to the external drive just to isolate the problem, and it works just fine. Only drag/drop fails. The drive is NTFS formatted because I use it to sneakernet files over to my work PC. Any idea why I can't drag and drop files anymore? The problem also exists when I VPN into a network and connect a network share. I can't drag/drop to it either. Strange part is, I will see the file show up on the drive for a split second, then disappear.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 26, 2011 9:55 AM

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Answer 1

groberts1980 Author

Level 1

22 points

Aug 1, 2011 7:16 AM in response to groberts1980

It just occured to me that this is an FAT32 drive I'm attempting to copy to. I keep this one drive FAT32 because I use it to copy files from my Mac to my work PC. Does anybody know if Apple removed write to FAT32 support in Lion?

Edit: Nevermind, I just tested my other external drive which is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted and I get the same results.

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Answer 2

Aug 7, 2011 10:27 PM in response to groberts1980

I have the exact same issue! Whats the deal...

Cant copy too or from any type of external drive. This is ludicrous!

File appears for a split second then dissapears. I coppied a document to a usb drive and left to work, plugged in my usb drive and whoops! I thought to myself "No way i remember copying it"

Luckily i had also saved to dropbox!

Apple do something!

Tried mac journaled and FAT32...no luck.

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Answer 3

Aug 7, 2011 10:35 PM in response to groberts1980

Alright...

After doing some research all it was is a glitch in the finder from a previous update not yet resolved.

A simple restart or finder relaunch should fix the issue.

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Answer 4

Angelo U

Level 1

4 points

Jun 22, 2013 3:20 PM in response to groberts1980

I had a similar problem yesterday and stumbled upon a simple fix.

TO FIX THIS PROBLEM, all I had to do was to "Repair Disk Permissions" using Apple's own DiskUtility. Somehow the disk permissions on my main drive were corrupted. As soon as these were fixed, I could write between drives again.

For good measure, I verified the disks and the disk permissions on all my drives.

By the way, a simple re-start DID NOT FIX the problem for me.

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