Copy error - "One or more items in "x" can't be changed because they are in use.

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The situation:
I currently have 4 external USB HDD's pluged into my Mac. I want to copy the contents of these external HDD (which are a variety of files from movies, to pictures and software installation files) to a new larger external HDD (that has both USB and Firewire connection).

The problem:
When I try to copy and paste or drag and drop, I get the following error message:

screenshot20110914at100.png


Now in the above example, the folder is called DON BACKUP, but I have tried with many different folders on the each of the 4 external HDDs and it is the same error message (but obviously with the different folder name in there). DON BACKUP folder actually contains backup files from an old Windows XP PC (not even Mac stuff!).
There is absolutely no system or application (aside from installation .dmg files) files on the external HDD's.

Tried the obvious such as a restart, removing the HDDs and plugging in again, etc.

Any ideas?
 
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Extended attributes

I was having trouble copying some files, getting the "One or more items in... can't be changed because they are in use" error. The files were grayed out in the Finder. Did a lot of Googling and found out about Extended file attributes (Extended file attributes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and xattr (Loading…). Upshot: If you ls a file in Terminal and the permissions list ends with "@", the file has extended attributes. If you ls the file again with the "-l@" flag, you will see the names and values of the extended attributes. In my case, it was the com.apple.FinderInfo attribute that was causing the problem. Deleted the attribute with "xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo [filename]" on each file and everything was hunky dory. NB: Extended attributes can also store resources or essential metadata, so don't delete them willy nilly. It's always safe to delete com.apple.FinderInfo.

Posting this to my top few hits so others won't have to spend as much time on this as I have.
 
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Deleted the attribute with "xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo [filename]" on each file and everything was hunky dory. NB: Extended attributes can also store resources or essential metadata, so don't delete them willy nilly. It's always safe to delete com.apple.FinderInfo.

thanks to henin for the solution! also came across this via google. ill add -- here's how to recursively remove the attribute for all files in a folder:

xattr -rd com.apple.FinderInfo /Volumes/Foo/bar​
 

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