external hd error 36

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TEKNICOLOURFOX

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Ive just got a wd 500

using mac os

after copying some files to the external hd, whenever i try copy files back to my macbook i 90% get this message

The finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "file name" could not be read or written
(Error code - 36)

hear the external hd clicking

Ive tried mounting/unmounting but keeps happening... anyone any ideas.

Cheers
 
I know nothing about Macs but from a quick Google Error 36 is an i/o error.


There's some reading here.

HDDs clicking is never a good sign, if you've any data you don't want to lose on it I would back it up somewhere asap.
 
no matter what i do, the ruddy thing wont let me copy things back onto my hd, its also deadly slow, and more often than not locks up and have to relaunch finder...

its a wd mybook and seems to be quite a common problem but canny find a fix...

ah well :mad:
 
only just got it from the sale forums, wanted to make sure i hadnt missed something before doing that
 
its a wd mybook and seems to be quite a common problem but canny find a fix...

ah well :mad:

I've got five of them some 3+ years old with no issues - did you reformat to HFS+ when it was new? I'm just wondering if there's some name format issue if its still FAT32?
 
I'm guessing the avi's are torrents? and as such they have.a.recurring.in.the.file.name? Or the file name is very long? Sounds like they have been truncated or otherwise amended on writing to the disk and now they probably have a ~1 etc - is that recognised as a valid file name character in Mac OS X?

If this is the issue go and manually edit the file names or create an Automator routine to do it for you then copy them back and reformat to HFS+.
 
cheers for the replies...

no its formated hfs+

.avi files are my own from handbrake...such as

batman begins.avi

file names are all exactly the same as on my 80gb wd portable and have no issues at all with that drive.

also does it on psd files. illustrator files etc as well though
 
When you say the the 1st model Essential do you mean its the one with a circular green status light? The current gen are all single blue slit light.

Try running Disk Utility and select the HDD and then run repair disc at the bottom right. After that try to repair permissions also.

The fact they're mostly from Handbrake is odd though.
 
When you say the the 1st model Essential do you mean its the one with a circular green status light? The current gen are all single blue slit light.

Try running Disk Utility and select the HDD and then run repair disc at the bottom right. After that try to repair permissions also.

The fact they're mostly from Handbrake is odd though.
 
hi, yes first model with circular light.

i can verify and repair disk, but the options to verify/repair disk permissions is greyed out.

I had to set partition option to GUID partition table for the mybook as it wont mount if set on Apple partition map. though my 80gb wd portable is apple partition map and works fine, dont know if that matters.

this is very annoying as its pretty useless to me at the minute
 
Interesting I didn't realise they had 500Gb models back then. In Disk Utility select the MacBook primary drive and run repair permissions on that. Then try ejecting any attached drives and reboot. Once you're back to the desktop run disk utility and then try reconnecting the drive and copying a file across again.

With Intel Macs GUID should be used, APM is for PPC models.

There is a firmware updater for the WD My Book on the WD website, so you could try using that to flash a new firmware to the HDD before you reject it finally - though selecting which version you need is sometimes difficult as there are many flavours of My Book.
 
do you know if using terminal to transfer the files (and if so how i cant work the thing out!) may work?
 
I was wondering about Terminal but I don't have enough knowledge to advise you.

One final thing to try if the drive is connected and you can see it on the desktop or Finder selct it and do a Get Info (Cmd-I) and open the bottom pane "sharing and permissions" tab and check whether its set to read and write for the a/c you're using on the MacBook. If it is I'd be tempted to create a second Admin a/c on the MacBook and log out of the existing a/c and into the new one to see if that makes a difference.
 
afraid no joy at all with the drive...

taking it to my mum and dads to format on theres, see if it works on pc...

thanks for all the suggestions.


:thumbsup:
 
Bad luck I'd be tempted to go to FAT32 if possible and ty it again on the Mac. There's another thread on here about a brand new Fujitsu or Hitachi ISTR that couldn't be formatted either, quite worrying.

I recall having a similar problem about a decade ago and then there was a very low level formatting utility available from WD that crawled over every byte and did work the one occasion I used it though it took all night and the drive was only about 4Gb!
 
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