EJW Tas

Q: Error message "The operation can't be completed because an item with the name .DS_Store already exists"

Major headaches with copying files and folders between drives. I constantly (and I mean constantly) have to resort to copying files across in small batches (fewer than 10 works best) because anytime I try to copy lots of files and folders from my mac to an external hard drive (or from one external HD to a second external HD), I ALWAYS get the error message  "The operation can't be completed because an item with the name .DS_Store already exists".

 

  • The files and folders are all Mac-generated, so hint or trace of foreign OSs in the mix.
  • All file types are susceptible
  • the HDs are all Mac OS X formatted, no foreign file formats involved
  • the HDs are all journal-enabled, OS X extended formats

 

have looked on here for previous posts, past suggestion was to disable creation of DS_Store files - not really a solution and realistically, defeats the purpose of their creation

 

 

any ideas anyone?

would appreciate any thoughts or sugestions, this has got me beat

 

the context is that I have a lot of image files that I am copying (trying to...) new external 3TB drives for backup and the job appears endless if I have to do this in batches of 10 or so..!

 

 

many thanks for any suggestions

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion, (mid-2012) 8GB RAM

Posted on Nov 13, 2012 10:53 PM

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Q: Error message "The operation can't be completed because an item with the name .DS_Store already exists"

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  • by fotogs,

    fotogs fotogs Jan 3, 2013 7:40 AM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 3, 2013 7:40 AM in response to EJW Tas

    Have you gotten any info on solving this?  I have the exact same problem.  Trying for days to copy one 3TB drive to another.

     

    Thanks

  • by EJW Tas,

    EJW Tas EJW Tas Jan 4, 2013 1:19 PM in response to fotogs
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 4, 2013 1:19 PM in response to fotogs

    Nope! My only solutions are to (1) use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy/clone folders or (2) zip the folders and copy the zip files before unzipping.

    Neither satisfactory and have tried other things such as 'ignore ownership' on drives, playing around with Terminal commands etc

     

    I -SUSPECT- it may be a case-sensitive issue - all my drives except my MBA are case-sensitive and I wonder if the issue is a result of this?

  • by rotopenguin,

    rotopenguin rotopenguin Apr 14, 2013 1:40 PM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 14, 2013 1:40 PM in response to EJW Tas

    Another handy way to copy is with Terminal.app. Open up a Terminal window, and type in 'cp -r '. Charlie Papa space dash Roger space. Switch to Finder, and drag-n-drop your source folder into Terminal. Back to Finder, take your destination folder and drag that into the Terminal window. Press enter in Terminal to start the operation, and cp will silently go to work. It should only produce text as it comes up with problems, either mentioning that it skipped a problem or asking you for a y/n.  If cp is still asking you too many questions about overwriting stuff, you might want to up your game with 'cp -rf ' instead.

     

    The title bar of Terminal will have 'cp' in the name while copying, that will turn back to 'bash' when the copy is done. This is much more visible in Terminal's tabs, you might want to open a second tab(Cmd-T) just for that.

  • by mbicca,

    mbicca mbicca Nov 3, 2013 10:46 PM in response to rotopenguin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 3, 2013 10:46 PM in response to rotopenguin

    Also, you can try deleting these .DS_Store files? I would open a terminal and do the following:

     

    $ sudo find /Volumes/VOLUME -name .DS*

     

    Where VOLUME is going to be whatever external hardrive you have, this should show all those files, if you see that the list is accurate, then you can delete all of them by using:

     

    $ sudo find /Volumes/VOLUME -name .DS* -exec rm {} \;

     

    I was having a similar problem and this resolved it.

     

    Hope it helps!

  • by Stridr8808,

    Stridr8808 Stridr8808 Dec 11, 2013 1:19 AM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 11, 2013 1:19 AM in response to EJW Tas

    I'm having this same problem in Mavericks on a brand-new freshly formatted disk.

     

    I tried the sudo commands suggested in the post above. I was able to sucessfully execute the operations, but it did not solve the problem for me.

     

    Anyone have a solution to this?

     

    Thanks!

  • by Stridr8808,

    Stridr8808 Stridr8808 Dec 11, 2013 5:44 PM in response to Stridr8808
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 11, 2013 5:44 PM in response to Stridr8808

    I ended up completely reformatting the drive and retrying again. After the reformat I was able to copy over the folders that failed the first time. But now, now even 24 hours later I'm having the same problem.

  • by cyberchucker,

    cyberchucker cyberchucker Jan 11, 2014 2:09 AM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 11, 2014 2:09 AM in response to EJW Tas

    This is clearly an Apple bug, but here's a quick and easy workaround that worked for me:

     

    • I was trying to copy a big (800 GB) folder from one external drive to the root of another. It consistently failed with the above error message.
    • My fix was simply to create a dummy folder in the root of the "To" drive and copy my big folder to that.
    • After it ran (3 hours, no problems), all the files were successfully copied to the dummy folder, so I just dragged that to the root and deleted the dummy folder.
  • by DavidRashedProductions,

    DavidRashedProductions DavidRashedProductions Jan 20, 2014 5:39 AM in response to cyberchucker
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 20, 2014 5:39 AM in response to cyberchucker

    Thank you so much for this,

    I'm trying to back up a Video Project and

    It was giving me that error each time,

    Creating a different folder allowed me to

    copy files to that drive.

     

    dr

  • by mcau,

    mcau mcau Apr 26, 2014 8:16 PM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 26, 2014 8:16 PM in response to EJW Tas

    I am getting the same error 'The operation can’t be completed because the item "filename" is in use.'

     

    I am copying a number of selected files from the local Mac drive to a Windows mounted file share.

     

    I have tried copying the selected files to a new temp folder on the share - that didn't seem to help...

     

    I am also trying to copy to the folder in the "list" view and I have turned off the view setting 'show icon preview' - this seems to help! Maybe the task to get the preview causes the 'in use' error.

     

    Anyway - turning the icon preview option off and not using the column folder view and creating a new temp folder seem to work.

     

    A bit frustrating though...

  • by bb-emali,

    bb-emali bb-emali Aug 13, 2014 2:59 AM in response to mcau
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 13, 2014 2:59 AM in response to mcau

    The message from mcau apparently resolved the issue for me (os x 10.9.4), wanting to copy to mac formatted external drive:

     

    1/ turn on LIST VIEW for the folder that will receive your files.

    2/ for the same folder, ctrl-click, "display presentation option" > disable "show icon preview"

     

    it works for me

  • by JohnArtist,

    JohnArtist JohnArtist Aug 28, 2014 8:33 AM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (68 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 28, 2014 8:33 AM in response to EJW Tas

    I just upgrade to Mavericks from 10.6.8 (via getting new iMac) and was copying my files from a back-up (networked computer) to an external drive (not the onboard iMac drive) and experienced the same thing.  I was able to get the files copied (slowly, as I did one main directory at a time (about 20)) by doing a combination of the above, as well as the Terminal command from this blog: http(colon)//danilo(dot)ariadoss(dot)com / how-to-recursively-remove-ds_store-files-on-mac-os-x/

     

    1. I did the disable "show icon preview" from bb-emali above.
    2. I used the Terminal command from link above to delete DS_Store files on the back-up.
    3. *** When I drag and dropped a folder to the new location, I then immediately closed both windows (the From and To windows).  **This made a difference!**  I tried without doing this, and I would get the error. When I closed the windows, it copied fine.  Very odd, but it worked!!


    How I miss 10.6.8. 

  • by shieladixon,

    shieladixon shieladixon Oct 18, 2014 4:51 AM in response to JohnArtist
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 18, 2014 4:51 AM in response to JohnArtist

    Thanks so much to everyone who's posted solutions, particularly JohnArtist. The terminal solution didn't work for me, but using Finder did after I'd disabled 'show icon preview' for the destination folder and for good measure closed Finder windows after the copy had started.

     

    Shame about the wasted hours.

  • by maehlum,

    maehlum maehlum Nov 7, 2014 1:01 PM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 7, 2014 1:01 PM in response to EJW Tas

    This is definitively a nuisance. When copying large amounts of files between volumes  try opening a terminal window and use use ditto. You need to type the directory paths of the source and the destination volume. When it starts ditto just coupes and optionally overwrites anything on the destination. You can get a verbose mode where it lists all activities.

     

    gunnars-mac-mini-i7:Volumes gunnar$ man ditto

    NAME

         ditto -- copy directory hierarchies, create and extract archives

     

    SYNOPSIS

         ditto [-v] [-V] [-X] [<options>] src ... dst_directory

         ditto [-v] [-V] [<options>] src_file dst_file

         ditto -c [-z | -j | -k] [-v] [-V] [-X] [<options>] src dst_archive

         ditto -x [-z | -j | -k] [-v] [-V] [<options>] src_archive ... dst_directory

         ditto -h | --help


  • by Vexatia,

    Vexatia Vexatia Dec 2, 2014 4:55 PM in response to EJW Tas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 2, 2014 4:55 PM in response to EJW Tas

    This post by themarcolv helped me.  Disable "DiskUnmountWatcher" in Activity Monitor, ftw.  Not sure what "DiskUnmountWatcher" does, so try at your own peril.

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