OS 9.2 - unable to copy from USB devices

[danram]

Hi,

I do have an iBook in front of me, that is too slow to work with OS X, but it will be usefull to a friend in Nicaragua. It works perfectly, but there is one issue I can´t resolve:

When I connect an USB drive and copy an item to the desktop ( or elsewhere on the iBook) it appears there. But when I eject the external drive it disappears again. Once connected to the drive again it shows up where I left it on the desktop. It seems that it just creates an alias and the only way around is to open each document and to "save as.." on the iBook. That is annoying and impossible with applications.

On the other hand it copies fine from the iBook to the external drive.

I searched quite a lot of forums and manuals, but I couldn´t find that anyone mentioned that problem.

Thanks,

Daniel.

 

[hughvane]

When you copy from the USB drive to the desktop, use Option-Drag.

 

[danram]

Thanks...

Thank you. it works. Even though from time to time - more and more frecuently - it shows the "+" but it still drags it without copying it. After restart it works fine, again. Might be some bug, I guess, but it makes things complicated if we have to restart every second time we need to copy something.

Any advice for that?

thanks,

Daniel.

 

[hughvane]

Thank you. it works. Even though from time to time - more and more frecuently - it shows the "+" but it still drags it without copying it. After restart it works fine, again. Any advice for that?

To be honest, I have no quick fix for what might be happening regarding the failure to copy more than 50% of the time. I have some questions/thoughts:
•Do you have maximum RAM in the iBook?
OS 9 used a function called HighMem which operated the system continuously. It required a certain % of RAM capacity. If you're operating the iBook with a low or minimum level of physical RAM, then the Finder functions, which control the copying you're doing, may be starved of necessary processing memory. HM itself may be overloaded, and that's why a restart fixes the problem, albeit temporarily. If not already, I'd suggest putting as much physical RAM in the iBook as it will take.
•Have you tried trashing the Finder preferences and rebooting?
That will tidy up the Desktop files and database, both of which are tracking every copy activity you do.
•Have you emptied the Trash?
•Are there some applications and other files you can remove completely from the iBook?
Each time you copy something to the iBook, it gets put wherever the Finder can locate free space on the hard drive. This leads to clutter which may be blocking the copy and distribute process until you restart.
•The hard disk sectors of the iBook may be badly fragmented. A utility like Norton System Works could help there.

Keep us posted on progress.

 

[danram]

looks like trashing the finder preferences worked fine.

Thanks, a lot.

 

[portent]

In OS 9 and earlier, the Desktop is not on any one volume. You can have something on the internal hard disk on the Desktop, another thing on a floppy/zip drive on the Desktop, another thing on a network server on the Desktop, and something else on an external hard disk on the Desktop, all at the same time. The Desktop is "in between" volumes.

If you drag something from your external disk to the desktop, it's still stored on the external disk, it just appears on the Desktop. When you eject the disk, the file goes with it, until you plug the disk back in (at which point it will reappear on the Desktop where you left it.)

To copy from one volume to another, you have to actually drag it onto that volume (or into a folder on that volume.) This is normal for OS 9.

In OS X and later, the Desktop is a folder in your user folder (~/Desktop) so everything on the Desktop is on the boot disk.