LaCie and OS X Mavericks file transfer fail

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csavvaCY Author

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LaCie and OS X Mavericks file transfer fail

Hi all,

I have the following configuration:

iMac 27" (2011)

LaCie LaCinema HD 1TB

The drive is close to a wireless router and connected via ethernet cable. The Mac however is connected wirelessly. Nearly every day I transfer large files from my Mac to the drive.

The problem:

As soon as I upgraded to Mavericks, I can connect to the drive and view the files from Finder no problem. But when I transfer a file it goes all the way to the end and it fails. The message that I get is that the file is in use, no error code is given. "The operation can’t be completed because the item XX is in use." Also I tried looking at the Console when this error happens and there is nothing logged there to show you.

I did notice however that this does not always happen and may vary from file to file, but if a file fails once it keeps on failing every time.

The drive is a NAS and from my searching I noticed that there was a change to SMB2 in Mavericks which I am not sure if its the one causing this as I did manage to successfully tranfer some files during these days.

Software wise, I have updated the software on both the Mac to talk to the drive and also on the drive itself.

Please help!!

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 28, 2013 4:03 AM

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Answer 1

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csavvaCY Author

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Oct 30, 2013 11:42 AM in response to csavvaCY

I have managed to solve this myself!

What I was doing so far was to open a Finder window navigate to the specific folder I wanted to put my file on the LaCie drive and then dragged and dropped it there directly.

Today I tried to put a small 200mb movie file on the drive the same way as above which takes about 2-3 minutes over wireless. I did notice however that at a few instances the Cover Flow icon on the top flickered as if it had been refreshed or something. Obviously the file transfer did fail again.

The solution is quite simple. I moved one level up in the LaCie drive from my target folder and then dragged and dropped it in the folder i wanted it to go the first place. Say if I have parent folder X and child folder Y then whilst viewing the contents of folder X, I drag the file to folder Y but without opening it in a separate window. File transfer was a success.

I then tried again with another larger file >1GB with the old way and this workaround and it worked 🙂

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Answer 2

avro5

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Nov 7, 2013 7:39 AM in response to csavvaCY

I have the same problem with a 1TB WDTV Live Hub media player, will have to try your work around. If I understand your fix; you only transfer to the parent folder (X) now and never to your target folder (Y), is that correct?

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Answer 3

reggiem3

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Nov 12, 2013 6:13 PM in response to avro5

I have the same issue with my 1TB WDTV Live Media Hub, too. I've tried the method described earlier, transfering to the parent folder and it's hit and miss. Not consistent. This all started since upgrading to Mavericks. I get the same message on both my iMac and Macbook Pro.

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Answer 4

avro5

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Nov 12, 2013 7:02 PM in response to reggiem3

I got this from another forum, it's not perfect but it is better when used with the work around above;

"there are ways to mitigate this problem. First, and both crudest and simplest, is to force your Mavericks Mac to use SMB instead of SMB2.

To do this you'll need to create a nsmb.conf file in your home directory with the path ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf. There are several ways to do this. First, you can up a terminal from Utilities and paste in the following line from the shell prompt:

echo "[default]" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf; echo "smb_neg=smb1_only" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

The above must be entered as a single line with a return at the end. You can also create this configuration file with a text editor such as vi from the terminal. Do not, however, try to create this file with a word processor. You'll end up with formatting characters in the file that will ruin it for configuration purposes.

You can also try forcing Mavericks to use the older SMB variant, Common Internet File System (CIFS). To do this, simply edit your server connection URL so that it uses CIFS. Use the Finder to choose the "Go" menu and select "Connect to Server..." (or just use command-K) and type "cifs://YourServerName" and hit Return; the server should mount. If it doesn't, try entering the share's designation as well, e.g. "cifs://YourServerName/YourDriveName."

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Answer 5

Ayubic

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Feb 26, 2014 5:58 AM in response to csavvaCY

hi, i have the same problem here, but I don't really get it how you worked it out, esp this line:

"I moved one level up in the LaCie drive from my target folder and then dragged and dropped it in the folder i wanted it to go the first place"

which one should I move? Because my HD is totally empty I want to copy files from my Mac into there. I kinda don't understand with the steps, would you please explain more specific? Thanks 🙂

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Answer 6

csavvaCY Author

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Feb 26, 2014 12:43 PM in response to avro5

@avro5: I did try to force SMB protocol instead of SMB2 but didn't work for me.

@Ayubic: Basically if you have an empty HD just add one new folder and then damp all your files in that folder. The important thing is that you do not open the target folder as a finder window but only its parent folder. The next might help "Say if I have parent folder X and child folder Y then whilst viewing the contents of folder X, I drag the file to folder Y but without opening it in a separate window. File transfer was a success."

Just to note that Maverics got an update yesterday 10.9.2. Although I did not get into the details of the update, it it mention that some stuff where fixed for SMB. Today (after updating) I did try to move several large files and movies to the LaCie HD and in some cases it did manage to transfer them directly to the target folder without any issues. This was not for all cases though. Those exceptions I have transfered them in the way I described earlier and was ok so the work around still works and the direct method partly works

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Answer 7

avro5

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Feb 26, 2014 7:49 PM in response to csavvaCY

Thanks for the heads up on the update csavvaCY I'm out of town right and have lowsey internet at the hotel, I'll have to update later. Hopefully they finally fixed this very anoying issue.

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Answer 8

Ayubic

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Feb 26, 2014 11:11 PM in response to csavvaCY

thanks for the info. i have tried again, but still not working, i just realised there's few files remain on my HD, but it sometimes shown up sometimes not, it's kinda confusing me, though, lol. i tried to googling about my case, and it says to better reformat the HD by the Disk Utility, but unluckily, it won't unamount the disk, it has always said "error. failed to unmount the disk" -_-

whenever i try to add one new folder it won't even appear! i think it's the problem with my HD. oh and i have also updated into 10.9.2 as well!!

i tried to ask my other friends, but the problem is seriously going to my HD, bcs he said he got the same brand of HD as mine, it's Seagate, which he assumes Seagates often got some errors, OMG :/ haha but anywho thankies for the explanations!! Cheers.

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