Cannot Copy File as File is in Use (Mac to Network Drive)

[tdale]

Another poster wishes to help with this so creating a new thread.

Copying over wifi from Mavericks onwards to a network drive, causes this error. Maybe first time, maybe it takes 4 times to copy, intermittent.

Suggestions online don't work, but they may do, then doesn't. Suggestions have been:
-Turn off icon preview and preview pane
-Use Terminal to switch to SMB1 or CIFS
-Right click the file, not fully select it when copying
-I used to copy, then select and unrelated file so as to not have the file I want to copy as being selected, that seemed to work,now its playing up.

My resolution was to put the file into a folder, and copy the folder, but as Graham wants to discuss, he may have other solutions, or reasons.

 

[grahamperrin]

Problems with SMB service from WD TV: first look

Thanks. For other readers, some additional context:

WD My Book attached to a WDTV Live. Reading online, the issue affects SMB file transfers from OSX Mavericks onwards to such a network system. Appears that OSX Finder is at fault. Issue is it copies the file, the after its copied, "cannot copy file as file is in use" Suggestions were to switch to SMB1 using terminal, change to CIFS, no dice. Its intermittent as it may work fine once, other times it may take 4 copies before it works. Same irregardless of the network drive brand or the NAS or simple network system in use. This is over wifi.Suggestions include turn off icon preview and preview plane, no dice. Right click the file so it isn't selected to copy, no dice. What does work, is I ut the file in a folder if its not already in one, and copy the folder, so thats what I will be doing now. The review suggestion was that preview was the process using the file, that may well be the case but turning review off didnt help. You will see online that this or that did work, the issue is it can take 4 or more copies to work, or it may work first time, intermittent. But I have a solution that is only very slightly inconvenient, so I will work with that.

In Windows, this never happens, unless you are moving a file that is in use by another program such as a video player. I could even copy a video file while it was playing as the file being copied is on the drive. The most tech answer was that OSX had a thread open when the file is selected or highlighted.

I'll take a closer look later – I have a few things in browser history that might be useful. Incidentally I shouldn't treat this as specific to Yosemite.

tdale, have you tried BlueHarvest? (Just curious – it's too soon to suggest the product as a workaround to the problems in your case. It's preferable to not intentionally discard metadata.)

… Use Terminal to switch to SMB1 or CIFS …

To clarify: that's client side, yes?

Related

WD TV Live

WD TV | Media Player

Why are dot underscore ._ files created, and how can I avoid them? – answers include Purposes of .DS_Store and ._ files

"… File business during a copy by Finder …"​

 

[tdale]

tdale, have you tried BlueHarvest? (Just curious – it's too soon to suggest the product as a workaround to the problems in your case. It's preferable to not intentionally discard metadata.)

Hi Graham, and no, haven't tried that, but I don't follow the connection.

 

[grahamperrin]

Symptom of a problem with file service (not with OS X)

… I don't follow the connection.

One of the things that you mentioned earlier –

"… file in a folder if its not already in one, and copy the folder …"​

– is recognisable as a client-side workaround for some types of poorly designed file service; servers that do not have good support for the metadata that may be beneficial, sometimes essential in a Mac environment.

For that reason my instinct is to focus primarily on the Western Digital firmware/software.

I don't expect an opportunity to test with any type of WD TV hardware, and detailed testing can be unexpectedly time-consuming, but there's a fairly simple way of testing the Western Digital environment.

For a moment, ignore folders.

If a file that can not be copied using Finder can be copied using ditto(1) with its --norsrc option, then I would say that there's a problem with Western Digital support for OS X.

 

[tdale]

One of the things that you mentioned earlier –

"… file in a folder if its not already in one, and copy the folder …"​

– is recognisable as a client-side workaround for some types of poorly designed file service; servers that do not have good support for the metadata that may be beneficial, sometimes essential in a Mac environment.

For that reason my instinct is to focus primarily on the Western Digital firmware/software.

I don't expect an opportunity to test with any type of WD TV hardware, and detailed testing can be unexpectedly time-consuming, but there's a fairly simple way of testing the Western Digital environment.

For a moment, ignore folders.

If a file that can not be copied using Finder can be copied using ditto(1) with its --norsrc option, then I would say that there's a problem with Western Digital support for OS X.

When I researched this, the many others with the same issue had varying drives, and devices, I can only recall me using a WDTV and drive actually. However, the behaviours were all the same no matter what drive or device was in use, it comes back to an SMB1/2 network issue it appears.

Note that I can copy files using Finder to me network drive. It may work first time, or second, or third, or fourth, which in itself is bizarre