How to overcome a error -50 when performing copy to new drive?

Question

How to overcome a error -50 when performing copy to new drive?

When moving a time machine backup database from an old drive to a new drive apparently some components of the old backup database is causing an error -50. This has been encountered in the past and has been thought to be associated with possibly items marked as write protected, however, since the actually item that triggers this failure is not easily identifiable it is difficult to determine precisely what the cause is. Any suggestions?

Posted on Mar 30, 2013 6:56 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,756 points

Mar 30, 2013 7:28 AM in response to James H. Zisch, III

That error can occur if there is an i/o error, either reading from or writing to the disk. Run disk utility and make sure both are ok.

Another option might be copying with the command line as indicated in this article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20831

Besides cp there is also ditto. Both have options to control what and how they copy, so you may want to find a tutorial on how to use them effectively.

Also, see here for possibility of illegal characters in file names:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4412045?tstart=0

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Mar 30, 2013 8:17 AM in response to James H. Zisch, III

Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.

Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions.

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Answer 3

Oct 18, 2014 6:08 PM in response to Linc Davis

I had -50 errors and not being able to write to 2TB SATA drive installed in optical drive bay adapter in MBP.

drive worked ok the first 2 days it was in. I tried all of the above as far as software fixes including power downs with no luck in getting it to go away. playing a hunch about the other post on a bad cable, I changed out the optical bay adapter for a new one, problem fixed. so redoing connections, swapping cables out could be the fix when all else fails...

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Answer 4

May 16, 2016 3:35 PM in response to Steve Oakley

I can not thank you enough for your post Steve as it helped me pinpoint the issue with my setup.

I was having the same exact problem with a new 2TB SATA in an optical drive bay adapter for my Macbook Pro 2011 using El Capitan. If I tried to erase, copy or move files, etc. I would get an error -50. I replaced the 2TB with my old 512GB SATA drive in the optical drive bay adapter and everything worked again. This gave me the idea to install the 2TB in place of my SSD drive and I moved the SSD drive to the optical bay drive adapter and now everything is working perfectly.

I wonder if the problem is due to a less than ideal chipset in the optical drive bay adapter. Did you use a different brand of optical drive bay adapter than what you originally had, Steve? I wonder if something like the MCE Technology Optibay Extreme adapter (http://tinyurl.com/hhkh5ov) would work.

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