Can't copy files to hard disk

Question

Can't copy files to hard disk

I have been having trouble copying/moving files to an external hard drive from my Macbook Air 3,2. I have moved and copied files from the MacBook Air many times to the external hard disk but this time I am having a lot of trouble.

I tried to move 2 movie files but it was taking an incredibly long time. So I clicked the "x" to cancel the transfer. However, it didn't stop it straightaway. The transfer just remained in limbo. Then I got a message saying something about how I didn't disconnect the hard disk properly and the hard disk just seemed to have disconnected itself from my computer even though I didn't eject it.

Then it caused problems for my MacBook Air. When I went to check on the disk in Utilities, it told me I had to use the installation disk to start it up. Other strange things happened like my desktop picture just disappeared and suddenly I had an extra 10GB on my hard drive.

I repaired the disk successfully using the installation thumb USB drive.

(I also repaired the external hard disk).

But I am having the same problem again when I try to move files onto the hard disk. It doesn't seem to work, as it's incredibly slow and when I cancel it, it says I ejected the hard disk wrongly. And the drive does not appear in the Finder Window.

I don't know why this is happening to me. I repaired the MacBook Air HD and I also repaired the external disk and I can't copy movie files onto the hard disk. I have enough space and both disks are Mac Ext Journal formatted. I copied lots of movies the other day (about three days ago and last night) onto the hard disk without any problems.

I really need to move the movies from my computer as I will runn out of disk space on the computer soon (I have about 12 GB left right now).

I tried copying a jpg picture as a test, and it copied it OK but it took a long time. Much longer than normal.

I got an error message just now:

The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “Elechxxxxxxxxxx.mp4” can’t be read or written.

(Error code -36)

I never got this sort of error message before but now I am getting this message today several times when I try and copy the movies. I don't think it's the files themselves because I copied the same sort of movie files last night without any problem.

And as I said, the jpg file took a really long time to copy, like 2 minutes even though it's only a very small file.

MBA v 3.2, 256GB SSD, 2.13GHz, 4GB-OTHER, Other OS, 10.6.8

Posted on Jul 5, 2013 3:39 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 5, 2013 3:50 AM in response to applecore_eater

I should add that it copies until 8.4 MB and then stops.

I found another thread where the exact same problem occurred to this person.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3179063

My external disk is a Samsung hard disk.

I have read the thread but am not sure what the solution they are talking about will help me - someone said they formatted the HD to FAT or something like that. I cannot do that as I need the EDD to be in Mac extended Journaled format.

It seems like this is a problem with the MacBook Air itself, and not with the EDD.

(I also had tons of problems with copying files onto an EDD with another MBA I had (2,3 version). It ended up crashing my computer and I had to wipe it clean and reinstall the whole operating system. It also wiped out the EDD and I complained to Samsung about it and I made them give me a brand new EDD for free, but later on I found out that it was the MBA and not the EDD. I know this because the same problem kept happening and I don't think Samsung makes that many faulty EDD, and I actually found the EDD to be working fine on another computer. My computer kept crashing whenever I tried to hook it up with an EDD and I lost all my data on the EDD several times, about 300GB of movies I had stored on it.)

What can I do? My computer is about three years old. I don't have Apple Care. I don't think this is my fault. I think this is an MBA problem.

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Answer 2

Jul 5, 2013 4:48 AM in response to applecore_eater

Now, my EDD has crashed and it seems like all the data has been wiped off. Just great.

I really doubt this has got anything to do with the Samsung HDD. I think it has to do with the MacBook Air because the exact same thing happened to me with the other MBA and the external drives kept getting erased and I lost all my data after I tried to copy files onto them.

Apple needs to correct this problem. I doubt it's Samsung's problem. It's really sad when I can't even trust to copy files onto an external drive for fear of external drives being wiped clean.

Like I said I didn't do anything wrong. All I did was just try and move files.

I repaired the disks and got the message that the disks were repaired.

Then I try to move files and now the EDD is wiped clean and I lose all my data.

What is the point in having an EDD for storing excess data or for saving precious data when all of it gets wiped clean because of the faulty MBA?

And it's not just me, it's happening to many other people. I did a search.

And there's no solution.

That's just great! All the precious data just disappeared!

I don't trust Apple and never will after this happened to me TWICE now, before on my old MBA (the EDD with hundreds of movies got wiped clean) and AGAIN TODAY!!!

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Answer 3

Jul 10, 2013 8:17 PM in response to applecore_eater

This is not about saving the data on the external drive but I found this information to be helpful in case people have problems ejecting a drive:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1322931

I threw the following:

sudo umount -vf /dev/disk1s1

and the drive umounted. -v is verbose, just in case there were any errors thrown I wanted to know, and -f is force umount, which forces the drive to unmount. Check 'man umount' from terminal to see more info on these.

After doing this a couple times (I was doing some testing with some other things to find a faster solution than having to open terminal and umount) it just started umounting correctly. I have no idea why, but it did. So just keep that command in mind, just in case.

Gryyphyn, out.

This may prevent the drive from being damaged by incorrect ejection. Because I could not eject the drive using force eject, restarting the computer etc, I unplugged the drive, which damaged the hardware of the drive.

If I had known about the command window method, I might have been able to avoid all these problems now that I have with a damaged drive and trying to rescue the data on that drive.

That being said, I think Apple should try and resolve this problem they have with users not being able to eject drives. It seems to be a VERY common problem, and has nothing to do with users' negligence but to do with a systemic fault of Apple's.

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Answer 4

Jul 10, 2013 9:59 PM in response to applecore_eater

You said------hard disk just seemed to have disconnected itself from my computer even though I didn't eject it.

Ive encountered this a lot, and the problem isnt on your MAC side, but on the side of the HD..... 99 times out a 100, a 2.5" that does this is in:

A: a junk HD enclosure with bad sata interface

B: a HD with power issues, .....its almost spooky how Ive seen this work illogically by not getting "just enough" power thru the USB port.

Do you have a junky HD? or worse still, a laptop HD that you screwed into a HD enclosure?........ HD enclosure boxes are amazingly AWFUL, there are few (very very few) that are reliable at all.......some ive used almost fail at X hours on cue.............boom, dead!

If you have a lot of internal HD you use as "external" backups, the MOST reliable method is get a USB dock/caddy. The most reliable one is $35 and takes either 2.5 or 3.5 " HD, made by USPEED, also sometimes marked and sold by Anker dirrect ,...heres a pic of one:

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Answer 5

Jul 11, 2013 3:49 AM in response to applecore_eater

Anyway, I managed to save the data on the Samsung drive by cloning it in a disk image using Data Recovery.

I am having trouble opening/mounting the disk image now (I keep getting the message that there is no mountable files), but I think I have overcome the problem.

http://superuser.com/questions/19426/im-unable-to-mount-a-dmg-getting-a-no-mount able-filesystems-error

I am using this method. And am in the middle of making a new disk image using Disk Utility.

Even though the volume is grayed out, I am still able to create a new disk image from it.

After that I will try and open it using Disk Drill.

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