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Trygve · Mar 2, 2005, 04:12 AM

I have two 320GB FireWire drives. Today whilst copying a 120GB file from one to the other (2 hours) with about 20min left to go, Finder stoped and reported a -50 error. I tried again and it worked fine.

The developer docs report -50 as "parameter error". Any ideas as to what happened?

The drives are brand new.

Detrius · Mar 3, 2005, 05:52 PM

I have a vague recollection of seeing this associated with hardware problems. It wouldn't be a bad idea to run a surface scan on these drives.

BTW, I have an ACTC buddy that I went to high school with out at the American University of Sharjah!

Trygve · Mar 3, 2005, 10:05 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
I have a vague recollection of seeing this associated with hardware problems. It wouldn't be a bad idea to run a surface scan on these drives.

BTW, I have an ACTC buddy that I went to high school with out at the American University of Sharjah!

Sharjah... just up the road! I am in Jumeria (slightly out of Dubai on the road to Abu Dhabi).

I would think -36 is a hardware error (i/o error). In any case, how can I run a surface scan? Disk Utility doesn't seem to offer it.

Trygve · Mar 4, 2005, 12:24 AM

I am wondering - it only seems to do it if I put the iPod into the dock during the copy. (2 LaCie FW drives + iPod are on the same FW bus CPU>FW>FW>iPod).

graveguy · Mar 4, 2005, 11:59 AM

Originally posted by Trygve:
The developer docs report -50 as "parameter error". Any ideas as to what happened?

What is the filesystem on the drives (FAT32)? If they aren't one of the standard Mac formats, certain filenames can cause the "-50" error you're seeing. Specifically, files with slashes, brackets, etc. will result in this error...try isolating the file that is causing the error and remove any funny characters from its name and try again...

Detrius · Mar 4, 2005, 12:08 PM

Originally posted by Trygve:
...In any case, how can I run a surface scan? Disk Utility doesn't seem to offer it.

Disk Utility won't. If you can boot into OS 9, Drive Setup Utility will. Otherwise, Tech Tool Pro is good for that (but not much else).

Trygve · Mar 4, 2005, 12:30 PM

Nope - File system is std. Mac OS X HFS Journaled. I haven't booted into 9 for a long time, and probably don't have Drive Setup around here.

Trygve · Mar 4, 2005, 12:32 PM

PS: I am copying a single file - a 120GB .dmg file called 'Archive.dmg' so there is no naming issue. I did a reformat and write zeros today with Disk Utility under 10.3.5 - it worked but stoped when the progress bar was only at about 60%... no error was reported though.