Bizzaro file copying problem...

[Lord Blackadder]

I'm in the process of migrating a bunch of data from an external drive (160GB USB 2.0) to one of my internal 250GB SATA drives, and have encountered a weird problem....

I have a large number of home videos as well as ripped DVDs ranging in size from a few hundred MB to 4GB or so, but can't successfully copy them. The first file copies fine, then every subesquent file will hang partway through, necessitating a hard reboot (I left them for a couple hours but they were still not moving). After the reboot, the first file will copy sucessfully, but the next will hang as before. It doesn't matter which ones I choose. What's up?

I successfully copied everything over my LAN by using my old iMac (USB 1.1 ) but I don't understand why I was having this issue. I was going to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner but I already have files on the destination drive.

 

[jsw]

I have no idea what causes this, but I had very similar problems with trying to copy from an internal drive to an external portable Firewire/USB2.0 one - same symptoms - on my G4 iMac and 12"PB (attributed it to a bad drive, but then it worked fine with my G5). Identical symptoms, and I too had to use the LAN to copy.

No help, I know - but just wanted to let you know I've seen it as well.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Werid. On the whole I've never had good luck trying to copy huge files between drives...I always assumed I was screwing up but it seems like there's something else going on.

 

[Kernow]

Does this happen if you copy the files one at a time, or as a group? I am going to start tidying up my hard drive by backing up to an external in the near future and don't want to run into this kind of problem.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

It happens for me regardless. If I try to copy them all at once, they all stall at the same % complete. With one at a time, the first copies OK then the next one stalls.