item already exists copying error

First off, I'm a new boy here - Hello.

Second, "Dear Moderator - aren't you taking the image verification a bit far ? Once at log in would seem to be enough to discourage auto generators"

And finally my question. I have a Mac Mini running 10.6, and am trying to copy (a lot) of files (using the finder) to a FAT32 formatted external drive to use at work on a PC. Copying always fails.

I have searched for an answer to this and not (yet) found one, and given the amount of comment elsewhere, I'm a bit surprised to find none here. My problem is when copying drive to drive in the finder, I virtually always get an error "Item with that name already exists". The item doesn't exist on the destination drive, but copying is stopped.

Is there a workaround other than copy every folder and file independently - as suggested elsewhere. That's fine for a few files, but not for thousands.

Help

Geoff

Hello new boy *waves*

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 byte or 4,294,967,295 (232−1) bytes. Video applications, large databases, and some other software easily exceed this limit. Larger files require another filesystem, such as NTFS.

So one way you could do it would be to get Paragon NTFS support for your machine then you could format the drive as NTFS, copy the files across and use them on windows too

Hope this helps
- Simon

Try cp -Rv source destination in the Terminal to see if that helps.

Source Dest eg ~/username/Documents /Volumes/ExtHDname

cp -Rv ~/username/Documents /Volumes/ExtHDname

The R will copies directories as well as files, the v is verbose mode to show the copy.

solution

Thanks for advice guys.

It pointed me in a direction I hadn't considered - NTFS.

The following seems to have worked :

Restart Bootcamp

Format disk NTFS using Bootcamp

Restart Mac

Download and install MacFUSE and Tuxera NTFS

Copy files

The only downside seems to be that the disk contents are shown wrongly

Hope this might help others with the same problem.

Geoff

ps Please lose the image verification thing - it's far too intrusive

You need to be aware that MacFuse, NTFS 3G, or Tuxera, all have been known to cause corruption when writing to NTFS drives. (Especially when writing very large files.)

The only application that I recommend using will cost you $19.95. Suggest you look at buying and installing Paragon NTFS.