Why does DS_Store prevent copying?

I'm having this problem too!
Both when I try to copy files to an external drive, AND when I try and copy documents and folders onto another location on my mac's INTERNAL drive ! Weird.

I hope somebody can help, this is frustrating.

This answer doesnt solve the issue for me. I have a Lacie rugged USB three drive im copying over to a 1TB Graid and i all i get is that the .DS_store file is busy message and the transfer cacels. extremely frustrating. Please help.

The ignore ownership checkbox doesnt seem to solve the problem.

Same here.

I've always had various problems copying large amounts of date, but never this ".DS" thing until yesterday, just after upgrading to Mavericks.

Lord, there must be a solution. I literally can't work like this.

Was running into this problem today. I had Ignore owenership checked, some options were still read only. I eventually reset everything on the drive to Read & Write but was still having problems until I clicked on the gear box at the bottom of the Sharing & Permissions panel and selected "Apply to enclosed items" now things are moving just fine. (so far). Hope that helps someone.

Phil

I also found a solution. It's working so far, but who knows if it will last. Anyay:

Download OnyX (freeware)

Open this app, and select the "maintenance" tab. In THAT window, you will be going to the "rebuild" section, but first, de-select all checkmarks under "permissions" and "scripts."

The under "rebuild, de-selct everything EXCEPT "appearance of folder's content." Leave it set for "this folder and all sub-folders."

You can now naviagte to all of your hard drives, and delete ALL .DS files. New, clean ones will be automatically and instantly generated.

Sadly, you cannot navigate to / clean an entire drive, it must be a folder. What I did was create temporary "hold" folders on each of my drives, into which i dumped the entire contents, then cleaned THAT folder with OnyX. I think you can also do everything at once by navigating to your master boot drive icon, then clicking on the "volumes" folder, (which oddly contains all drives connected to your Mac) but I haven't tried this yet.

Anyway, on my first two attempts at transferring huge collections of data, things went without a hitch, which is a minor miracle for me.

Sadly, the OnyX solution only lasts for one transfer or so. The very next time I try to transfer a large folder, the .DS problem comes back.

This HAS to be a bug in Mavericks. - For me Maverisks is nothing a lost finctunailty and huge frustration. The list of things that no longer work properly is huge.

This HAS to be a bug in Mavericks.

Since this topic began long before Mavericks existed, I'd say that claim is a stretch.

The cause here has to be permissions issues. Why some people are seeing such an issue, and only with .DS_Store files, I don't know. My suspicion would be that some kind of third-party software, such as drive management software, a "cleaning" utility or anti-virus software, is likely to be the cause.

My computer installs Parallels virtual machine, I shared the files between Mac and Windows, and I use Windows system to copy or delete files between Mac and other storage devices (such as external USB harddisk or network attached storage), this solved my problem for these .DS_Store files.

That sounds like a really good idea Wilson. I will try it. Thanks!
How sad that we have to go to these lengths for the most basic functionality.

This is quite a disappointing a fail from apple !

I haven't backed up in quite a while because of this issue, because it got so frustrating,

so I'm not even sure if an update to mountain lion has resolved the issue yet.

I'll try a backup soon, and if it doesn't work, I'll use your method.

Fair enough.

All I know is, it never hapened to my under Lion, and now it happens every time I xfer large amounts of data.

Also, as previously mentioned, I'm not sure it's a "corrupted .DS file) problem, just that this is the only prompt the Mac can "think" to display when it happens. I say this (again) because I can always transfer the entire contents of a folder, as long as I do small chunks at a time. It's only when I try to move the entire thing at once (whether selected manually or via "select all") that the problem occurs.

- And the copying process always stops on exactly the same file, as if that file in particular has a problem. Yet, transferring that file BY ITSELF works just fine, as does copying that file along with the files just before & just after it, so there can't be a corrupted .ds file "in the space" just before it.

Well, I assume Apple is working on this now, so ....

As I said earlier today, this topic began long before Mavericks existed. Thus, blaming Mavericks doesn't make sense.

To repeat my suggestion from earlier:

The cause here has to be permissions issues. Why some people are seeing such an issue, and only with .DS_Store files, I don't know. My suspicion would be that some kind of third-party software, such as drive management software, a "cleaning" utility or anti-virus software, is likely to be the cause.

rhone1 [ and cableaddict ]:

You realize this thread was started by a man named Gary in the OS X MOUNTAIN LION FORUMS ?

Sorry about the caps / bold / underline, but I'm just trying to make it clear, so you don't think it is "just a mavericks issue".

Also, if you actually read through the thread, you will notice myself and 1 or 2 others, are all experiencing these problems in Mountain Lion.

I think there is another couple of similar threads related to this problem in ML as well.

..............

Hi Thomas.

Thank you for your suggestions.

I'm having this trouble in ML.

I don't have drive management or cleaning software , and I am running Sophos anti-virus only very occasionally [it is not active all the time]...

so none of those things are going to be the problem for me.

It could possibly be TotalFinder [a finder plugin that I run], but I've never had issues with it before.

When I get home I will see if terminating that will make any difference.

Any other ideas are appreciated, but otherwise, thanks anyway !

I never had this problem in Lion and now Mountain Lion does it all the time. Checking ignore ownership does not work for me - so it's not a permissions problem - Using Windows 7 to copy Mac file sworks 100% as well as using Lion machine on the network the problem does not appear so for sure (or appear) it's not related to permissions.

It is NOT a 3rd party app issue. I have a brand new NAS and a brand new Mini. I have NO apps on the mini except MediaCenter19 other than what came with the OS. And I don't even allow MC to monitor the library folders. I do it all myself. When I copy a very large folder (music) containing a number of large subfolders, it quits because "there is already a 'DS_Store".

It is certainly an OS bug. It's a PITA!!! My work around is to show hidden files, and when I copy, I am careful not to include the .DS_Store file in the from files. Then there is no problem.

So, I repeat. It is not a 3rd party issue, but rather a bug in the OS.