Problems backing up, is it the internal hd or the external hd.

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Level 1

124 points

Problems backing up, is it the internal hd or the external hd.

I have an early Intel MBP with a replaced Western Digital 750Gb internal drive I installed about 2 years ago. The machine is slow and I haven't even gotten it into Snow Leopard, let alone Lion, so the time has come: wipe this drive clean and do a fresh install.

I bought a new WD 2Tb external, formatted for Windows and reformatted for Mac (Mac OS Journaled I believe). When I'm copying data over, I am getting a LOT of -36 errors, data can't be read or copied. It could just be w few bad sectors on the internal drive, but I'm getting an awful lot of bad errors. Of course I have to force quit Finder when I get those errors. So copying files is becoming beyond tedious, not to mention I'm trashing whatever problematic files I can catch (none of them so far are that important). But I can't copy over 500gigs and walk away. Doing it piecemeal is painful too.

I'm guessing, hoping, it's the internal drive. I doubt it's the new drive, but not sure. Any ideas on how to transfer data more efficiently or remedy the situation? I'm verifying permissions in Disk Utility now, but not sure if that will help anyway.

Thanks in advance Apple Discussiion Board,

Lee

Mac SE, P-book 160,MacMini,G3,G5,MBP, iPad, lots of boxes with lights and things, Mac OS X (10.5.8), ipad, desk, chair, lamp.....

Posted on Aug 29, 2011 9:35 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Aug 29, 2011 9:38 PM in response to Lee Sachs

You have not prepped the external drive properly:

Drive Preparation

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

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Answer 2

Lee Sachs Author

Level 1

124 points

Aug 30, 2011 4:41 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks Kappy, but there are a few things that don't quite fit.

For a brand-new drive, even if it's not formatted for Mac, I've never had to zero out data to make it usable. Otherwise, I followed the procedure you mentioned above.
When I was able to locate an offending file that threw the Error -36, I decided to try to copy the file locally (duplicate it on the internal HD); the duplicating failed as well. The files (in these case movies, mpg, .wmv, mov, etc.) functioned okay though and played through.
As I wrote the topic last night, I was verifying permissions; this morning there are a bunch of permission errors and I'm repairing those now. I don't think this is related to permissions, but repairing anyway.

Stay tuned....thanks,

Lee

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