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laytonhayes

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 26, 2003
32
0
Savannah, GA, USA
I am trying to move a file from one drive to another and it keeps giving me a cannot copy error. Is there a program that can fix a corruption in a file? It starts to pause 3/4 of the way through, and then gives me the error. Thanks.
 
laytonhayes said:
I am trying to move a file from one drive to another and it keeps giving me a cannot copy error. Is there a program that can fix a corruption in a file? It starts to pause 3/4 of the way through, and then gives me the error. Thanks.

Well, it depends on the error. Does it say something else is using the file or just cannot copy?

Either way, I would try to copy it as root via terminal and see what happens. Let's say the file is on your desktop, and you want to copy it to the second drive labeled HD2. Open Terminal (under Applications/Utilities) and type:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/File /Volumes/HD2

It will prompt for a password, and simply enter your password there. Test to see if it copied correctly. You can use md5sum for this via Terminal:

md5sum ~/Desktop/File /Volumes/HD2/File

This utility calculates an MD5 hash for a given file. Since the files should be the same, the two hash lines should match exactly. If not, the file did not copy correctly. If they matched, you can remove the original file:

sudo rm ~/Desktop/File
 
Thanks for the help. I tried using the terminal to copy but it still gives me an Input/Output error around 3/4 of the way. Any other suggestions?
 
Hmm.. Have you ran fsck yet? Boot into single user mode (hold Command+S after boot chime) then run 'fsck -y'

That will fix all errors it finds by answering yes to all questions. If you want to see if it has any errors, run 'fsck -n' and it will answer no to all questions during the run.
 
Are both volumes HFS+? If the files is large, maybe the destination filesystem cannot handle a file that large. I believe FAT32 could only handle up to a 2GB file.
 
The drives are both Journaled HFS+. I get the same problem when trying to copy to the same drive, even using cut and paste. The file is around 375mb so size is not an issue. The file is a video file, it plays fine, just does not copy.
 
I'm stumped. The only thing I can think of is a bad sector on the hard disk, and that may make the file unrecoverable.

I'm sorry I don't have any more ideas.
 
Just thought of something... Can you open the file and save it elsewhere? Like if it were a QT movie, you could hit Save As and save it to the other drive.
 
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