How to fix Error Code -41

[Foundry]

I have a MAC Power PC (Dual 2.3 GHz with 8 GB Ram) running OS X 10.5.8. I have been keeping a lot of my files on an external 700 GB drive (USB 2.0), which is format to the Mac OS (extended). The drive is showing that I have 292 GB used and 405 GB available. Today however, I received this error message when I tried to connect to it:

"Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occurred (Error code -41)."

On doing research on this, I note that this error is:
-41 mFulErr Memory full (open) or file won't fit (load)

I am not sure exactly what happened to get this error.

As I have all of my Time Machine backups on here, this error will not allow me to access my previous backups to revert to a previous state. I can see that my backups from yesterday are there though.

Short of backing up all of my data, and reformatting my drive (which I am not sure will fix this anyway), what can I do to correct this error?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on this matter.

 

[harryb2448]

A lot of error 41 codes seem to be associated with Final Cut Pro if you have been using that. Here is an item from Apple Discussion:-

Apple - Support - Discussions - General Error (41), I cannot open my ...

On my machine same specs use SuperDuper and a Firewire external HDD. USB2 is not the greatest on Macs generally. The advantage of Firewire also for our machines is you can copy your OS and boot from it.