Error code -36, External HD Apparently Done For

Howdy!

So a few weeks ago, I copied my entire music library (97.5gb) onto my external hard drive (Mac OS X Extended, Journaled) to save space on my boot drive. Since then, I've been able to update my iPod, receiving the message "Attempting to copy to the disk <iPod name> failed. The disk could not be read from or written to". I formatted my iPod to see if that was the problem, but it still won't copy. So, in order to right that situation, I tried to copy all my music back to my regular HD, but now am receiving the Finder Error code -36 "The Finder cannot complete the operation because some of the data in (name of file) could not be read or written."

I can't format the external drive either because then I would lose all of my music. :/

Tomorrow said:

Hopefully you have all your music on your iPod.

As for the error code -36, often you can use Terminal to execute the command dot_clean on the offending folder, and it can fix the problem. Seems some filenames get a bit corrupted when accessed both by a Windows and OS X system.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I formatted my iPod because I originally thought that was the reason it wasn't syncing... and no Windows machines were involved at any time. The external HD is Mac OS X Extended format...

EDIT: I went through my library and found the files that were corrupted, deleted them, and all seems to be well.