Error copying files - proper Mac Geek needed to help on this

[Mac Man]

Looks like a problem for someone who knows the command line interface this one, as I couldn't find any help when I Googled it.

When I try copying files from one external drive to another I get this message

"One or more items have special permissions and cannot be copied....."

I've tried changing the permissions on the drive through the finder but that doesn't work.

[SamRadford]

If you could be more specific about the type and location of the files, it would help. If they are on the boot drive, try repairing permissions with Disk Utility. Also make sure you are logged in as Admin.

[Mac Man]

Originally Posted by SamRadford

If you could be more specific about the type and location of the files, it would help. If they are on the boot drive, try repairing permissions with Disk Utility. Also make sure you are logged in as Admin.

The files are on an external drive. I am trying to copy them to another external drive.

I bought a La Cie ethernet drive which I want to use as a file server on the network. I also have another drive (the ones with the files I want to copy) that i want to piggyback onto the Ethernet drive. In order to do this I need to reformat this drive with all the files on as, currently, it won't show up over the network when connected to the Ethernet Drive.

So.... I first want to copy all these files over to the Ethernet Drive. But the old drive keeps throwing up the above error.

I tried Disk Utility on the external drive to no avail.

[Fordy]

have you checked the ownership of the files?

if not select them all, press apple&i then check ownership and permissions in the info panel, if it doesnt say you can read and write change it for all the files at once. if that doesn't work you might have to do it one by one.

[Mac Man]

Originally Posted by Fordy

have you checked the ownership of the files?

if not select them all, press apple&i then check ownership and permissions in the info panel, if it doesnt say you can read and write change it for all the files at once. if that doesn't work you might have to do it one by one.

Hi fordy - I've tried that on the folder containg all the files and sub-folders and clicked on 'apply to all' - making them read & write. No luck


No chance of going through one-by-one as there is 480Gb worth :-(

[SamRadford]

Select the external drive containing the files. Press cmd [i] to Get Info. Check (tick) the box labelled "Ignore ownership on this volume".

[ABC1]

I find the most common reason for file not copying from drive to drive is that they are locked, you need to unlock files beforehand, this is done by clicking on the file, hitting the command-i keys and half way down the information panel is a tick box marked lock, make sure this is unlocked. The easy way to see if a document is locked it to change the view to icons, if a document is locked, a padlock will appear in the bottom left corner.
Unfortunately this applies more often or not to music files, mp3 etc that are commercially bought, from say iTunes. As far as I am aware you will have to check all files individually, you can't group unlock as far as I know.

[Mac Man]

Originally Posted by ABC1

I find the most common reason for file not copying from drive to drive is that they are locked, you need to unlock files beforehand, this is done by clicking on the file, hitting the command-i keys and half way down the information panel is a tick box marked lock, make sure this is unlocked. The easy way to see if a document is locked it to change the view to icons, if a document is locked, a padlock will appear in the bottom left corner.
Unfortunately this applies more often or not to music files, mp3 etc that are commercially bought, from say iTunes. As far as I am aware you will have to check all files individually, you can't group unlock as far as I know.

Any easy way of checking for locked files? Be nice to see which files needed unlocking. There's about 30,000 files on the disk. So not much chance of checking them individually.

[rimmep1]

I thought that drive format was important too. I'm pretty new to Macs myself, but have realised that writing to NTFS-formatted network devices from a Mac is a no-go - "permission" errors galore.

You haven't mentioned the format of the La Cie Ethernet drive - so I thought I'd just throw the NTFS bit in to see if it rang any bells...

[ABC1]

As I stated previously checking for 'locked' files is not easy, I am unaware of a way of quick checking this. As I said before, commercial files eg music/applications are the most likely to be locked, not files you have created yourself.
If the drive you are copying to is formatted for pc as well as mac, then you may have other issues as well, such as name strings that are to long, of invalid character in the name string, pc wont let you have "%+ or hash" in the name, so will fail copying with a permissions error.
Unfortunately I have found there is rarely a quick way around this type of error, other than copy the information across in batches eg folders/subfolders working out what the problem is as you go along.

[raigraphixs]

Originally Posted by Chris Lamle

Any easy way of checking for locked files? Be nice to see which files needed unlocking. There's about 30,000 files on the disk. So not much chance of checking them individually.

Have you tried the obvious - Select ALL the files in list view, and then Apple+Option+I to lock/unlock multiply files.

[Mac Man]

Originally Posted by rimmep1

I thought that drive format was important too. I'm pretty new to Macs myself, but have realised that writing to NTFS-formatted network devices from a Mac is a no-go - "permission" errors galore.

You haven't mentioned the format of the La Cie Ethernet drive - so I thought I'd just throw the NTFS bit in to see if it rang any bells...

Drive is formatted as SMB/CIFS

Weird things are happening tho.... my colleagues was trying to copy a few files and decided to click on 'continue' when confronted with the error message.

However... I think we'll follow your thinking and reformat the ethernet drive to a more mac friendly format :-)

And see how that goes.

But thanks for everybody's input so far. Much appreciated

[SamRadford]

Originally Posted by SamRadford

Select the external drive containing the files. Press cmd [i] to Get Info. Check (tick) the box labelled "Ignore ownership on this volume".

And, if that doesn't work, try this:
http://www.gideonsoftworks.com/filexaminer.html
(Worked for me with a similar problem).

[Mac Man]

Originally Posted by SamRadford

And, if that doesn't work, try this:
http://www.gideonsoftworks.com/filexaminer.html
(Worked for me with a similar problem).

Thanks

Will give it a try.

[agoodey]

I have had many problems copying files to Lacie Ethernet disks, and often the error is a little more cryptic than it first seems. - The most common cause is actually with the drive you are writing to - the file being copied to the disk has a character in its filename that causes the error - such as a space at the beginning, or forward slashes in the filename. (SMB does not allow many of the filenames that AFP does)

As Lacie ethernet disks use their own formatting, you cannot simply re-format the drive as HFS+. The easiest way to overcome this problem is to connect via AFP rather than SMB. This is achieved by using the 'Connect to Server...' option on the Finder's Go menu, and typing AFP://[ip address of ethernet disk] in the server address. AFP is normally enabled on Lacie ethernet disks, but if it isn't you can enable it from the NAS administration Pages by editing the share and making sure that there is a tick box next to Apple.

All this assumes that you have purchased either a Lacie Ethernet Disk Mini, or a Lacie Ethernet Big Disk. If you have purchased a rack mounted Lacie Ethernet disk and wish to use it in a Mac environment, my suggestion is return it to your supplier and choose another product - the version of AFP installed in the embedded XP OS is very unreliable. (I have been trying for months to get it to work reliably with several of my clients, and it just doesn't work properly)