copying to ext drive stuck

[lori5060]

i connected empty 3tb drive to macbook and also 2tb drive with lot of data on it. select only 1 folder to copy 115.34gb.... i thought it started ok. later looked at it and pop up screen said 'copying items" showing 115.34gb .
i left it for awhile and looked later and still the same. so i decided to stop copying. force ejected the drives. and thought would be end of it. however, the pop up screen is still there saying 'copying 0 items to ....." i cannot close this screen.
i had an issue like this a few weeks ago. so i re connected the drives to mac thinking they would be show on desktop as active... nothing happened. so here i am again...cannot access my ext drive.
i know it must be a timing thing... cuz when it happened before... after some time it was recognized and i could access my ext drive.
currently i have both drives connected to mac and nothing is happening.
so.... should i force eject and leave them sit for some time to cool off and get their files sorted or just leave them connected.
i cant remember what i did last time when this happened and fixed itself.
i know i posted this somewhere but could not find it again.

 

[MacInWin]

With that much to copy, the preparation stage can take a long time, so it looks like nothing is happening. Force ejecting a drive being copied is a HUGE no-no, as the files may be open and if the drive is force ejected the data may not be written to the directory, making the files unreadable (and maybe the drive also). So don't do that. Period.

Have you tried to reboot the Mac? That will cancel the copy process and should reset the connections so you can start over.

If you want to cancel a copy, you have to click on the Cancel button and then wait for the cancellation to happen. That can take a while if you are in the middle of a HUGE transfer like that.

Do you have either Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner? They both do a better job of copying that much data for you.

But for now, try a reboot of the Mac to get control again.

 

[lori5060]

too late.... already ejected. i tried to shutdown but wuld not. so i pressed start/stop button and finally it shut down. the copying screen now gone. i have control again.

i will attempt tomorrow again to see if drive is recognized at all. i do have super duper and check that out.

otherwise will have to do copying in smaller groups!

 

[krs]

too late.... already ejected.

In that case I would erase everything on the target drive and start again.
I was trying to copy data from two very old 1.5TB drives to two new 2TB external portables and had similar problems.
Copying just stopped with one file with 5 seconds to go to completion - clicked on stopping that copy process, but that didn't work.
Ejecting didn't work either. Eventually I had to shut down the Mini by holding down the power button - something I don't like to do.
After a few more tries to copy and then to try to convert the video file to a different format, it seems something in the file was corrupt even though it played fine with VLC.
In the end I bypassed copying it until I have more time to look at it.

 

[lori5060]

i do have super duper app. i did a super duper clone of my mac several months ago.
so my question is.....using superduper....can i open the old ext drive and clone it to a other ext drive?

 

[lori5060]

have started copying files over in groups. working well. gives me opportunity to find obvious duplicates. also I'm keeping track of the size of the folders and the number of items within those folders.
I was told when you are copying from xfat to MAC the file size will be smaller.... that is a very good bit of info!
so I'm concentrating on the number of items within ea folder to make sure I'm getting all my data.

 

[lori5060]

am curious? back in my windows days .... I remember there was an option to fix the lost clusters on windows internal drive. I vaguely remember that when you were copying to a drive, if file didn't fit into the size of slot that was next in line, it would skip over it and go to next area...Resulting in scattered bits of files. My internal running slowly, I would run this option and it would put all the files together that are supposed to be together and closing up the empty clusters.
Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
culd this be one problem i am running into with all this copying im working on?
If so is there such a thing that I could do on my external drives or even on my MacBook.

 

[MacInWin]

can i open the old ext drive and clone it to a other ext drive?

Yes, you can.

 

[lori5060]

Yes, you can.

i tried but could not get it to work. would not let me access the ext drives. didnt have permission.

fir now.... Im doing it folder by folder and gathering all dups in one folder... at some point will work on those.

 

[lori5060]

see pics...im probably not doing something right. i opened commander and then directed each screen to two different ext drives. one (combined) would open but the other (keeper) would not.

 

[lori5060]

Well I think I know what the problem was......I had finished using my external drives and had ejected them even tho they were still connect. when opened commander, of course it wasn't working because they weren't connected! Silly woman?
So I tried to close out Commander and I couldn't close.. I tried to hit retry and nothing worked. it was stuck!
I tried restart, shut down mac and nothing worked.

iSo I had to press my start button to totally close the whole MacBook down.
i'm sure when I open the lid again the Apple icon will come up and everything will be Tickety boo again!

guess it's a sign for me to stop playing around with new things and just carry-on with the things I know for now. Maybe I need a D cluttering up my brain as well as a decluttering of my external drive LOL LOL LOL

 

[krs]

What does Commander One do for you?
When I copied files from one external drive to another external one, I just dragged files and folders from one to the other.

 

[MacInWin]

Commander One allows you to open two locations at the same time in one window. Then you can drag files from one to the other location. It's a slightly-better-than-Finder Finder.

 

[krs]

Commander One allows you to open two locations at the same time in one window. Then you can drag files from one to the other location. It's a slightly-better-than-Finder Finder.

Thanks Jake, but I still don't see the benefit of Commander One, at least for that operation of copying files & folders from one external to another.
I have two external USB 3.0 drives, drive "A" and drive "B"
I plug each one into one of the USB ports on the Mini - drive "A"and drive "B" show up on the desktop.
I launch drive "A" and reduce the size of the window that opens to half the width of the screen, then move that window to the left of the screen.
Then I do the same thing with drive "B" except I move that window to the right of the screen.
And then I just drag files and folders from one window to the other.

Takes a lot longer to type than to actually do this.

 

[krs]

am curious back in my windows days .... I remember there was an option to fix the lost clusters on windows internal drive. I vaguely remember that when you were copying to a drive, if file didn't fit into the size of slot that was next in line, it would skip over it and go to next area...Resulting in scattered bits of files. My internal running slowly, I would run this option and it would put all the files together that are supposed to be together and closing up the empty clusters.
Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
culd this be one problem i am running into with all this copying im working on?
If so is there such a thing that I could do on my external drives or even on my MacBook.

Sounds like hard drive fragmentation.
Not an issue with the Mac.

 

[chscag]

@ krs:

Don't know if you have ever used Windows, but most of us older Windows users remember a handy file manager called "Norton Commander". (Yes, it was from Peter Norton who later sold out his business and name to Symantec.)

Anyway, it provided a dual pane file manager amongst other nice things for handling Windows files, folders, etc. Many popular file managers which came later for both Windows and the Mac were designed after the Norton Commander.

You can do a search for Mac file managers and probably come up with four or five that are popular. Some are free while others are not.

Of course it's a matter of preference to use a file manager or stick with the Finder. Finder has actually become more capable and can do a lot of the things that file managers do. Albeit, with a bit more work on your part.

 

[MacInWin]

Thanks Jake, but I still don't see the benefit of Commander One, at least for that operation of copying files & folders from one external to another.
I have two external USB 3.0 drives, drive "A" and drive "B"
I plug each one into one of the USB ports on the Mini - drive "A"and drive "B" show up on the desktop.
I launch drive "A" and reduce the size of the window that opens to half the width of the screen, then move that window to the left of the screen.
Then I do the same thing with drive "B" except I move that window to the right of the screen.
And then I just drag files and folders from one window to the other.

Takes a lot longer to type than to actually do this.

Yep, you can do that. I've done it lots of times. Or, you can launch Commander one, click on Drive A in the left window and Drive B in the right window and drag from one to the other. Works the same. The real beauty of Commander One is if you use list view in both windows you get a side-by-side comparison of the files. Sort them in any given order and if the two drives have the same files, the two windows should be identical. It's really easy to see where the two lists deviate.

Yes, you can do that with two windows. Commander One is, like a lot of third-party utilities, not strictly needed. But it's good at what it does.

 

[lori5060]

Sounds like hard drive fragmentation.
Not an issue with the Mac.

yes that is what it was called. "defrag" good to know not an issue with Mac.

 

[lori5060]

im going to try commander again this am. i see in app store there is commander 1 & 2.... is one better than the other?

 

[IWT]

im going to try commander again this am. i see in app store there is commander 1 & 2.... is one better than the other?

I think this is what is being suggested:


Ian