copying a huge archive (invalid argument)

[sehnsucht77]

I need to copy a huge file off my external to my laptop and the initial process failed under Finder producing an error-50 so, I tried terminal using the cp [filename] [~/Documents] command. All is well until about 5GB when I run into an "invalid argument" and the process just stops copying.

Anyone have any tips on how I can just have the process skip over bad files and continue copying the valid files? Thx.

 

[trooperx17]

you can easily use rsync protocol..

open the terminal, enter "man rsync"

 

[sehnsucht77]

you can easily use rsync protocol..

open the terminal, enter "man rsync"

thanks. i will try that out. can this apply to a zip file as well? the document is one who zipped document

also, i would like to test the zip archive under a windows machine but when i try unzipping it, i get an error that says "unsupported compression method." do you have a tip on how to unzip something with a cross platform program? the file is just a zip but done so on a Mac. I tried unzipping the file on the PC with jzip -no dice.

 

[trooperx17]

thanks. i will try that out. can this apply to a zip file as well? the document is one who zipped document

also, i would like to test the zip archive under a windows machine but when i try unzipping it, i get an error that says "unsupported compression method." do you have a tip on how to unzip something with a cross platform program? the file is just a zip but done so on a Mac. I tried unzipping the file on the PC with jzip -no dice.

try 7zip on windows side.

 

[sehnsucht77]

try 7zip on windows side.

tried it and no dice. other suggestions?

also, is there a utility that can fix zip archive errors? i can't uncompress is on the PC because 7zip says that it is an unsupported compression method. i have tried copying the file using Finder (produces error -50), tried using terminal using cp or rsync (invalid argument after some x amount of copying) and i cannot uncompress it on the PC because it wont recognize it and the Mac wont do it either because of errors.

 

[sehnsucht77]

Partially Solved!

i did some research and it seems osx and some of its archiving programs have problems with offset headers in large archive files so if you try to unzip it and it doesn't like the way those headers look it will automatically produce an error like error 1 or error 50 even if the integrity of the files inside is ok.

solution: i tried unzipping the large zip file using different programs because they may have packaged the archive differently. my solution involved trying unarchiver, stuffit, betterzip, 7zip, winzip and attempting to repair the zip using a number of recovery programs -all of which failed and never did the job right.

in the end i used terminal with the command "unzip" and i dragged the file from my external to the terminal window. it unzipped a good chunk of the file but left out whichever ones had "offset headers" whatever that means.

so my question is this: for defective headers in an archive file, how do I fix them and what utility can I use? I can view the files in Betterzip so I know some programs can see the file structure and it must still be ok but the unzipping process is screwing up somehow.

 

[sehnsucht77]

zip -FF command...how to change it to weed out only certain files?

I tried using the terminal command zip -FF {file.zip} --out {fixedfile.zip} and got this error.

zip warning: no end of stream entry found: pictures/DSCN1736.AVI
zip warning: rewinding and scanning for later entries
zip warning: new zip file left as: /Volumes/LaCie 1TB/pictures/ziDMBioe
zip I/O error: Invalid argument
zip error: Input file read failure (was replacing the original zip file)

the copying process to make the zip was fine and stopped at this point so there is an unfinished zip file as a result. seems the jpeg/jpg files are fine and only the AVI is keeping me from properly producing the zip which is wonderful because I don't care about the video files.

how can i change the syntax terminal command, zip -FF {file.zip} --out {fixedfile.zip}, to ONLY unzip images?

thanks.