Error Code 43 When Copying From External

I'm having a similar issue with my Firewire 800 Drobo as the source and a USB hard drive as the destination. My iTunes library is on that disc and lately, too, every time I start iTunes I get an error that my library is corrupted. This only started in the last few weeks.

do you have one of those cans of pressurized dry gas to maybe blow clean the connecting ports on each device? Alternates: blow by mouth, vacuum nozzle. If dust is interfering with good electrical contacts things can go awry.

I hope that helps.

This is most likely to be caused by corruption of the disk's directory structures. I would recommend repairing that external drive with Disk Utility (found in the Utilities folder, which is in the Applications folder).

In my experience, this error message crops up when there is an illegal character in some of your filenames or folder names, such as a slash (/). I've also seen this crop up when a folder name ends with a space. A folder name ending with a space seems to be an illegal character as well.

If you're trying to copy these sorts of illegally-named files in the Finder, you'll get the error message:

"The operation can’t be completed because one or more required items can’t be found. (Error code -43)"

However, if you're copying lots & lots & lots of files, it might be very difficult to figure out which files are the culprits.

So, the easy way to figure out which files are the problem is to use the Terminal to copy your files. The Terminal will give you a list of all the files that it couldn't copy, while still successfully copying all the rest. In other words, the Terminal won't unexpectedly stop halfway through the copy preocedure just because it stumbled upon a couple of poorly-named files. It will happily copy all the rest of the files, and give you a list of the problematic files.

In the Terminal, simply type in this command:

cp -r PathToSourceFolder PathToDestinationFolder/

Note the trailing slash at the end.

For "PathToSourceFolder" and "PathToDestinationFolder", simply drag-and-drop the folders that you want to use into the Terminal, and the Terminal will spell out the path for you.

That's it!

Hi - I am having the same problem. When I open a Word document file from my USB drive on my iMac, my machine opens it fine. But when I close it, the iMac changes the file icon to a large forward-sloping blue W. When I click on it to open it again, I get the 'application unavailable to open this file' and the 'error-43 message.In fact, when I look into the file, there is nothing there - the mac has deleted it! Not recoverable - even when I launch MS Word for Mac.

Help!! Anyone else had this??

where can i find the Terminal

i got it...thanks

Thank you. cp -r will now be in my toolbox for copying problems since we're pulling stuff off of a bunch of pre-OSX Macs. We didn't encounter /s or spaces but found some filenames with undisplayed characters. Simply retyping the filenames appears to have fixed the problem.

Cool, it worked for me!

The error messages appear on the terminal, but the copy went well.

Many thanks!

Scott, I'm not sure if you're going to get this, but I have an urgent question for you regarding error code 43. I've researched online, called Apple, etc. I've gotten no answers thus far. So I guess I'll ask here, and just hope that you specifically get this!

I put a bunch of VERY important video files on an external HD that I had/have plugged into my older Mac Pro. But before I did, I believe I recall having to get Mac drivers for it. Anyways, my internal HD crashed, and when I got a new one, I noticed that all the videos on my external, titled with a /, now won't play, show as an alias file with zero kb, and produce an error code 43. The external drive, under format, also says Windows NT File System, and I'm not sure if it said that before, or just automatically went back to it's native format after my internal drive crashed. I also can't bring new files into it, but I can pull files OUT of it, a side from the ones that are "illegally titled". However, these illegally titled videos were never a problem before, but became one once I got the new internal, and installed an older OS (Snow Leopard). I believe I had Mountain Lion prior, could that be the problem?

Last thing... Just for a test, I removed a legally titled video from my external, onto the desktop, titled it illegally, and it works fine! Are these legal/illegal characters a Windows thing, since it seems to have worked when I had Mac drivers for the external? Is there any way, outside of data recovery, that I can get these videos back? This project has almost been 20 years in the making, literally. It would be a tragedy to have these lost!

Thank you!

Hey. I know this was a long time ago but I get the error 43 when trying to copy the photos folder. I tried to to do it with terminal but it gave me a "no such file or directory" when referring to the photos library. Any advice?

Repairing the two drives that you are transferring from and to, works for me.

That was it. I had an '&' in one of the file names. All working fine now. Thanks