I'm doing something wrong but I don't know what

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Thanks again, guys. Good advice and I shall heed it. But the fact still remains that I can't do the drag 'n drop thing. I have tried using smaller SD cards (not SDHC Micro cards in an adaptor), I have tried various sized USB sticks and 2 external hard drives connected by a USB lead and in all cases, when I highlight the file that I want to copy from the desktop to the storage device, as soon as I drag the file into the storage folder a white circle with a diagonal bar through it appears and it isn't possible to copy the file.
Any clues?
Cheers,
Steve.
 
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Thanks again, guys. Good advice and I shall heed it. But the fact still remains that I can't do the drag 'n drop thing. I have tried using smaller SD cards (not SDHC Micro cards in an adaptor), I have tried various sized USB sticks and 2 external hard drives connected by a USB lead and in all cases, when I highlight the file that I want to copy from the desktop to the storage device, as soon as I drag the file into the storage folder a white circle with a diagonal bar through it appears and it isn't possible to copy the file.
Any clues?
Cheers,
Steve.

Ok, first off, where exactly are these files located? How big are they? Highlight one that won't move, then press CMD-I to get an info sheet.

How exactly are the "normal" SD cards formatted? Select one in Finder and press CMD-I to get the info sheet. See my screen cap for an example. And are they even "normal"? Where did you get them? What specific brand/model?

screenshot_01.jpg
 
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Steve, are you able to copy/move files within your main HD? From a desktop to a folder?
What about copying files from a Documents folder (your desktop is not really an intended storage place for your files) to say, Downloads folder, or vice versa?

If any of these are giving you errors, go to Disk Utility, select your main HD and click Verify Disk Permissions, wait for it to finish, and if it lists any errors, click on Repair Disk Permissions.

You've mentioned USB sticks and external HDs - are these all newly acquired? If not, were you able to use them before? Can you see files on, and can you copy a file, from external USB storage to your main HD?

If there's nothing stored on a particular USB drive, try to reformat it, after verifying it is indeed formatted correctly, as lifeisabeach above suggested.

Also, rather than drag-and-drop, can you try CMD-C and CMD-V ? Shouldn't make a difference, if everything is configured correctly, but if it does, it'll be a clue...
 
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lifesabeach asked ..... Ok, first off, where exactly are these files located?

The files that I want to move to the SD card are located on my desktop. They are located inside folders named for the author. There are 26 Authurs with anything between 6 and 42 novels inside each folder and they are all under 600kb

The first SD card to be tested is one that I have had for about 4 years. It is 128mb in size. The Format line says .....MS-DOS (FAT 16) There is no actual name on the card unless "Multimediacard" is a registered name.

The next one to try is a 1gb MicroSD card in an adapter. I've had it for years and it hs been used with no problems at all. According to the Info it is formatted as MS-DOS (FAT 16) and has a capacity of 966.5mb.

The next one is similar in build up but it is a 128 mb micro SD card in an adaptor. As before, owned for years and used to drag/drop files many times in the past with no problems. This one is formatted just the same as the first 2 but this one has a capacity of 122.5 mb.
I'll leave it there for now and get on with some work.
Cheers all,
Steve.
 
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Verify that the SD cards have no contents on them, and make sure you empty the trash while they are mounted. If you still can't write anything to them, then take them to your Windows laptop and see if it can write to them. If the laptop can't, then something is wrong with those cards.
 
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I downloaded a bunch of ePub books from our library to my MBP and encountered the same problem when I tried to copy them to a thumb drive. The files cannot be copied because the author(s) have protected them. It's like copyright protection for eBooks. The SD card is good if data files, excel files, documents, etc., will copy.
 
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Finder

Two other ways...
1. In a finder window open the card. Copy the files. Open the card window. Make a new folder, open it. Paste into the new folder.

2. In a finder window, open the folder with thee pubs. Select all.
Open a second finder window, navigate to mini, make a new folder. Open the new folder. Drag the selected file into the new mini ffolder.
 

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