Itunes library won't transfer to portable hard drive. Error 36 constantly popping up for multiple items. Is there any way to fix this?

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Itunes library won't transfer to portable hard drive. Error 36 constantly popping up for multiple items. Is there any way to fix this?

Hi all,

I recently got a new macbook pro because my old one finally bit the dust. I can still get it working, but it's just too slow and freezes constantly. I've been trying to back up my itunes library to my portable hard drive, and I keep getting "error 36". It's happened for movies, tv shows, apps and songs. No matter how many of these files I delete, there always seems to be more. It causes the transfer to stop and I have to restart it just about every 5 minutes. Does anybody have any idea as to why so many of miles are coming up as error 36, or have any idea of a better way to transfer my itunes library?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Jul 6, 2015 7:15 PM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

411,157 points

Jul 6, 2015 7:48 PM in response to bigguy461

"36" or "-36"? There is a huge difference and correct error reporting is important if you want to get correct solutions.

Often -36 means an error on the external drive but I suppose it could be the internal drive which you already suspect is giving trouble. I don't know if you have tried any repair utilities, and those may not even work. You may have left this too long.

I presume this external drive is Mac formatted and not FAT.

General information on I/O error -36 - http://fuzzy.wordpress.com/2006/12/10/ioerror-36/

General information about error -36 - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3902534?answerId=18221459022#18221459022 - bad disk or format; try using Terminal to copy file.

Error -36 reported when copying files to external drive - http://discussions.apple.com/thread/1791026?answerId=8467699022#8467699022

Error -36 and filename characteristics - http://discussions.apple.com/thread/2040544?answerId=9629287022#9629287022 - FAT drives may not like all Mac filenames

AD topic on Error -36 trouble shooting - http://discussions.apple.com/thread/1816992?answerId=8586572022#8586572022

If copying to a FAT drive you may be encountering FAT format file size limitations (4GB for FAT32).

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