External Hard Drive Problem

MaggieMagee · #1 November 13th, 2005, 07:30 PM

I am trying to move a 24 GB iMovie project from my new 60 GB iBook onto a Lacie 160 GB external hard drive. I've successfully moved a number of photos and small video clips and music, but when I try to drag/copy this iMovie project it says "The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "01 I want Wind To Blow 01.aiff" could not be read or written. (Error code -36". I know that has something to do with Input/Output, but thats all I know. I DELETED that 'problematic' song from the file, and re-saved it on its own and successfully moved it to the new hard drive, but now with the altered move it still will not copy, and blames it on the same problem! What do I do next/what am I doing wrong?
-Maggie

BjarneDM · #2 November 14th, 2005, 03:53 PM

There's a bug in Finder when moving files to/from external harddrives which results in one getting errors like the one you are reporting. Try using the Finder replacement 'Path Finder' instead. I've had Finder hang the whole computer when moving stuff around to/from my external HDDs, so I've switched to almost exclusively using 'Path Finder'

texanpenguin · #3 November 14th, 2005, 05:23 PM

Or try Repairing Permissions.

BjarneDM · #4 November 15th, 2005, 07:20 AM

You are writing '24GB project'. Is any single part of the project bigger than 2GB ? If so then that might be the problem. I've just had to move some DVD *.iso's from one computer to another, and both Findes as well as 'Path Finder' refused to move them instead giving errors. The iso's in question were in the order of 3.5GB - 4.5GB.

My solution was to move them using commands in Terminal.

illuminatti · #5 March 1st, 2006, 04:30 PM

you might also try to drag and drop your entire hard drive to your lacie. from finder, click on your hd image and drag it to the external image. you might get a message that says not all the info can be transfered, but click the option that allows you to keep going. error -36 also shows up when a hard drive is going bad, so a back up of all your files is a good idea. (i'm not saying that your drive is going bad, but backups are always a good idea!) i recommend that you partition your external drive with a sector that is the size of your original to keep a clone of your info. i just lost an 80gb pwrbk drive, and this saved my rear, and several grand of fcp adobe cs etc... if this works you should be able to click on the new image from your external and run everything from there. i hope this helps, i'm not an expert, but this worked for me.