Small Progress Bar Not Working

Hi, I am using Mountain Lion on my MacBook Pro, whenever I try and copy a folder containing videos to my external hard drive, the traditional progress bar disappears. The small progress bar above the folder being copied doesn't seem to move and when I click on the X above the folder, nothing happens. If I eject the hard drive, it sometimes warns me that it is in use, but when I plug it back in, the folder seems to have completely transferred to the hard drive. I don't know why this is happening but i copy these folders over a lot, and the new, small progress bar never does anything, it never tells me that my copying is compete. Any help would be greatly appreciated!