[ComedyGuy]

I bought a 300-gig external hard drive from Ioni with a USB 2.0 interface for use in backing up my iBook 1.2 Ghz G4 laptop running OS 10.4.5 and 768 MB RAM. I meant to get a firewire interface, but regardless...

When I drag the folders I want backed up, the process hangs on this error:

"An item could not be copied. Skip the file and continue copying contents of folder?" I click "Yes" but nothing happens and the whole folder does not get copied. So,

1) How do I find out which file cannot be copied? And,
2) How do I skip the offending file and complete the backup?

p.s. Is it possible that "locked" files may not copy? If so, how do I run a mass unlocking? Thanks.

[Cadaver]

What folders are you trying to backup?
If you're dragging your Library folder, you may encounter files that have permissions set improperly. This can happen if the applications that put them there are poorly coded (I'm sure there are several other reasons, too).
Try running Disk Utility and repairing permissions on your boot volume.

[MrSoftee]

I've encountered the exact same thing a few months ago when backing up to an external harddrive.

If your external HDD is formatted as FAT32 that is likely to be the problem (as it was for me). If you plan on using it solely for backing up your mac, i suggest reformatting it to HFS+.