Problem copying picture file to USB drive

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Level 1

68 points

Problem copying picture file to USB drive

My daughter is home from school with her Mac Book Pro running El Captain. On it, she has her life's photos, all 66,000 of them. She does not back up while at school. I am concerned that if she has a disk failure, she may loose all of her pictures. I bought a 64GB USB flash drive and tried to copy Photos Library to it. I opened finder windows and moved (copied) the entire file to the USB. After fifteen minutes, it said that the file was 60.1 GB and started to transfer the file. Three hours later, with 48.8GB transferred, it stopped and said that the destination drive was not large enough.

I now have a greyed out file on the USB that I presume has 75% of the pictures. I cannot open the file.

What do I have? Does it contain most of the photos? If so, how can I open it?

Posted on Mar 27, 2016 7:03 AM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

428,171 points

Mar 27, 2016 7:11 AM in response to Joemac8

It is possible the drive you purchased has defects.

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Answer 2

Joemac8 Author

Level 1

68 points

Mar 27, 2016 7:26 AM in response to Limnos

It is possible. I started out using a 2.0 USB and it said it would take four days to complete. It was then that I switched to a new 3.0 USB.

Any idea of whether or not I can open the greyed out file that I have???

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Answer 3

OGELTHORPE

Level 9

57,329 points

Mar 27, 2016 7:32 AM in response to Joemac8

I suggest that you purchase two external HDDs. One for your daughter to use to backup her data while at school and the second to take off the pictures that you are now dealing with. Copying data to a USB drive, even when healthy, is a very long process. HDDs are much faster, especially if you can take advantage of the USB3 connectivity.

Ciao.

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Answer 4

dwb

Level 7

33,256 points

Mar 27, 2016 8:30 AM in response to Joemac8

Whether or not the flash drive is defective or too small the important issue is that a flash drive is not suitable for safe backup. A flash drive should be used only as a “sneaker net” solution because it is too easy to lose and too easily damaged. As Oglethorpe suggests purchase a high quality external drive. I suggest you look here rather than at your local discount or office store. OWC sells quality external drives which isn’t always the case at the stores that sell sheets, carrots, and computers.

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