Cannot copy content folders to external drives?!? Help!

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I work from both home and an office and basically all over. I recently just bought a brand new iMac for my home office (which I am totally in love with) and I am having some trouble with using portable USB & external HDs in order to transport my files.I had an old Powerbook G4 before this and never ran into this issue.

When I try to move a folder from my iMac to any external drive it gives me a message saying that I cannot copy the folder because a folder by that name already exists... when there is no folder by the same name at all! I tried changing the name of the folder, and I still get the same error with the different name?!?! I thought maybe it was just that one folder but no it happens with ALL of them?!?!

I am have tried everything I could think of to NO avail :[

Does anyone have any ideas, or suggestions? I really need to be able to move folders to and from these drives for my job. ANY help is appreciated.

Thanks!
 

chscag

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What kind of folders are you trying to move? It sounds like it may be a matter of permissions that is causing the error. Assuming of course the drives you're copying to are either HFS+ or FAT-32 formatted.

Regards.
 
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They are just regular folders filled with various types of files. I have never changed any permissions or formats that I know of....?
 
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I had the same issue when I was copying several folders of pictures from backup Cd's to an external hard drive when I bought my iMac. What worked for me was to create an empty folder with the name I wanted on the external drive and then copy the files over to that drive. If I tried to just drag the folder to the drive to copy that way, it would give the error. Only by dragging the files into a newly created folder was I able to copy them.

There was no pattern to what folders would give the error as some of the copied fine. But this was a workable solution for me. I now have no problem adding files to any of the folders on the external drive now that the folders are there. I don't know if it will work for you, but it is something to try.
 
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I have tried the copy and paste method... still won't work.
 

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