Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I guess but why should I have to compress it. I'm trying to find out if anyone knows why I'm getting that error... It always stop around 49-50gb mark out of 55gb. I don't think thI format type of my external hd is the issue.
 
I'll try formatting to hfs+ later when I get home. Assuming I get the same errors, how do I fix it? Thanks.
 
So your statement that HFS+ is required doesn't make sense to me when I've been doing it with iPhotos for years... Thanks.

Yes but in your first line you state this started when you updated to 10.10.3...so I'd guess something there has changed, did you have an NTFS driver loaded under 10.10.2 or earlier for instance?

If you just want this for backup then format the drive as HFS+ and be done with it...
 
I wanted to stay with a format that could be read/written natively with Windows also; that's why I don't want to go HFS+.

I did not have a NFTS driver loaded before I updated to 10.10.3.

I just formatted to HFS+ and it works! However, I still want to know WHY my iPhoto library would be copied before I formatted to HFS+ and stopped working once iPhoto was migrated to Photos. I know that dyt1983 stated there could be issued with files flagged or with permissions that are not supported by the partition format; however, what changed between iPhoto and Photos where that the iPhoto library worked when copying but Photos library doesn't...

Thank you all for your replies.
 
[[ I just formatted to HFS+ and it works! ]]

I recommend that you use ONLY a "Mac-formatted" drive (HFS+) on which to store Mac files that are important to you.

There is the chance of unpredictability or worse if you use a cross-platform formatted drive (Mac and PC) for such things.

This entire thread reflects one of those "unpredictabilities".

If you need a drive on which to share or move things between the Mac and the PC, I recommend that you maintain a drive specifically and only for that purpose. Could be a hard drive, USB flashdrive of sufficient capacity, etc.

Things just go better when you do it like this...

Final thought:
I recall reading (I think it was over at macintouch.com) that when Photos first imports an iPhoto or Aperture library, that it creates "hard links" of some sort, which give the user the "appearance" of two separate libraries (but there are not actually two separate copies of everything -IN- those libraries). Perhaps this is why a non-HFS+ volume can't be used to simply "copy" folders and files...
 
So what if, after migrating to Photos, you delete your iPhoto library. Is your Photos library really deleted?
 
Ok, because that's what I did. I didn't do "faces" or anything like that. So am I ok since I deleted my iPhoto library...? Thanks.
 
I have the same problem in reverse

I used to have my iPhoto library with my iTunes in an external HD in order for it to not eat up much of my laptop's HD and it was running fine. Recently, I migrated to Photos which created a Photos library and that was also fine.
The problem came when I bought a new Mac Mini to use as a home computer and I wanted to move both my iTunes and Photos libraries into the local hard drive. iTunes moved perfectly fine but Photos starts copying and at exactly 19.2 Gb of 31.66 it stalls and eventually returns that same error. I've tried fixing permissions of the entire HD and it still does the same.
I can run the library from the external HD but that's not what I want to do. My external HD is formatted in HFS+ by the way.

Reading this thread and a few other online it seems like the Photos library is not as "movable" as the old iPhoto and iTunes libraries which really sucks. Probably the only way around it is to have iCloud backing it up…
 
What makes the PHOTOS library different that it will not complete the transfer? It gets to around 50gb out of 55gb and gives me the above referenced error (unexpected error has occurred).
You may be running into a file system restriction. Some of the filenames within the Photos Library folder (yes, it's a folder -- right-click on it and select Show Package Contents) may not be "legal" characters within the FAT file system. FAT is a very old file system, but as noted above, the only one that has read/write between Mac OS and Windows. Apple completely changed the organizational structure of the Photos Library from iPhoto to Photos.

As a side note, if your Photos Library was a single file (it's not), FAT has a file size restriction of 4GB for a single file.
 
I am having the same issue. I tried to move my Photos library to the internal hard drive on my Time Capsule (pretty sure there's no formatting issue there), but after about 80 of 90 GB were copied, I go the same error.
 
I am trying to copy/backup a 95GB Photos Library from my local drive to an external drive that is formatted for Mac OS Extended. Each time I try, I receive that familiar error message before even getting to 2GB of transfer: "The Finder can't complete the operation because...(Error code -36)".

I would be grateful for suggestions on how to complete this backup.
 
If it's using features of HFS, or Unix, which exFat doesn't support, like Hardlinks, it would fail. I don't run Yosemite, and personally wouldn't use any derivative of FAT for backup, but I do know the import process of converting iPhoto to a Photos library uses Hardlinks, which avoids making a copy of all the data. It means your photos can appear in two libraries at once, while only one copy exists, and you can delete one without deleting the original files. It is a feature of Unix. I don't know if copying the library to an external drive would cause an issue though. I use Aperture still, and all my images are referenced on external drives, hence not inside a library file.
 
Thread revival!
Was trying to copy it for a clean install... and just copy back the Pictures folder once I've wiped the HD...
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.