Big copy/move job handling

I'm a dual platform user who's fairly new to Macs so I have to ask about this...

When you have a large number of files and/or folders you want to move or copy to another drive, sometimes you run into trouble half way through the process. You know, one of the files might accidentally be open, or write protected, or whatever.

The way Vista handles this is that the normally green progress bar turns red, and a window pops up where you're asked if you want to try again with the culprit file(s), or if you want to skip that file and continue. This gives you an opportunity to fix the problem (close the file, remove its write protection etc) and continue.

Well, I did the same thing on one of my Macs the other day, and sure enough it stopped halfway through the process due to problems with a file (it was either damaged or the file name was illegal for the target location, can't remember). But rather than ask me how I wanted to proceed, it just plain quit and left me with a big mess with half the files on the Mac and the rest on the network drive. Is this how it usually works, or is there some setting hidden somewhere so that you can change this behavior? I don't wanna go through this again only to find that yet another file is causing problems, forcing me to start over...

kbmb said:

Huge downfall of the Finder to me. I don't think there is any setting to change this. Finder really needs an overhaul IMO.

Same thing goes for deleting....I was trying to delete a bunch of stuff, and 1 file was locked. Wouldn't tell which file, and wouldn't go past it. I had to dig file by file to find it.

I've learned since switching to a Mac....NEVER move large amounts of files for this very reason. Always copy, so you can start over if you have to.

I just don't think Apple cares that much about the Finder experience for the more hardcore users.

-Kevin

Click to expand...

Dang... 😡

They're careful not to tell switchers about all the little things that are actually worse in MacOS than Windows... but I can live with that, marketing was never about telling the whole truth. What bugs me though is when they flat out lie... like the other day I was watching one of those 'PC guy' commercials where PC guy moaned about Windows returning "cryptic error messages". OK, you tell me, which of these is more cryptic?

1) "Microsoft Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. This problem was caused by Adobe Flash Player, which was created by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe Systems Incorporated is aware of this problem and working as quickly as possible to make a solution available."

2) "Error code -43"

Is it really that hard to implement error messages that are a liiiiiittle more informative, so that you don't have to go to appleerrorcodes.com and find out what the hell the number means?

j26 said:

If you do it a lot, it might be worthwhile to have a little automator code to handle it for you.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm becoming more and more interested in that thing... can it also automate funky stuff upon login, like mount drives and stuff?

I'm using a Mac Mini as a kind of media station, it's hooked up to my TV and stereo and ideally I'd just control it with the remote and put the keyboard away... but the media files are on a network drive and there are a couple of obstacles in the way. I've gotten as far as placing aliases for the network shares in the user/movies folder, but these will be ignored unless the shares are mounted. In order to mount them automatically on startup, it seems I have to drag the shares to Login Items under my user account. This has the undesired side effect of three Finder windows cluttering up the desktop on every startup. Can I use Automator to get around that somehow?

(I hate to be a PC vs Mac pest again, but on the PC I can just mount these shares permanently and forget about it... I don't get why this needs to be a hassle on Mac)

kbmb said:

In the Login Items screen...did you click off the Hide checkbox for each Volume? Not sure whether that would solve the finder window problem.

-Kevin

Click to expand...

Unchecking Hide makes no difference unfortunately. And honestly it's a minor cosmetic issue, as starting up Front Row hides the desktop anyway. I'm just anal and stubborn about getting it perfect, I guess. And sometimes my seriously computer-unsavvy girlfriend uses it for regular computer tasks, and whenever something just pops up by itself (software update etc) she goes "Hey, what do I do with this?", those Finder windows being one source of bewilderment... 🙄

Anyway, thanks for the Youtube links, I'll check them out.