[ZanyJanie]

Hi. I'm a new iMac user and am having a strange problem when trying to copy files onto my iMac hard drive. Maybe some of you experts can help.

Here's the problem ...

1. I have about 120,000 photos backed up from my old PC and stored on a USB hard drive.

2. I used Bootcamp to install Win XP on my iMac, and when I boot up into Windows, I can see all of my photos perfectly.

3. I booted up in Mac OS and copied the photos onto my Mac hard drive. The copy appeared to work fine (no warning or error messages); but about 5,000 of my photos didn't copy.

4. The photos that didn't copy appear to be totally random. I checked their filenames to make sure they weren't too long and didn't any special/reserved characters. I also checked their properties to make sure they weren't hidden.

Needless to say, I am completely baffled. Any ideas, suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jane (The iMac Newbee)

[reader50]

Mac HFS+ file system is usually case-insensitive. The files that do not copy, do their names match files that did copy, except with case differences?

Example: On a case-sensitive file system, like most Linux distros use:

Photo12.jpg
Photo12.JPG
photo12.jpg

All these would be allowed as 3 separate files. On a case-insensitive system, this is the same filename, and it will not allow all 3 variations. You'd only end up with one of them.

[ZanyJanie]

Thanks for the suggestion; but the file names ARE unique. Then Windows file system (both FAT and NTFS) are also case insensitive and I can see the files when I boot up in Windows. I wish this was the problem; but it's something else. Still looking for answers

Jane

[Oisín]

Look on the bright side, though: for each photo missing, you can have a duplicate MacNN thread.

(Yeah, that was really helpful and knowledgeable, I know …)

I deleted the accidental dupe thread. All is now well on that front... Glenn

[ZanyJanie]

Thanks Glenn.

Boy, that would be a whole bunch of dup threads. Thanks for the delete ... I figured out how to edit it; but didn't see a way to delete it.

BTW. I tried my copy again and still have a lot of missing photos; but not the exact same ones as before. This is really strange!

Just curious ... Has anyone found a program that will sync files between Windows and MAC files systems? I'm probably hoping for the for the impossible since each file system sees the other as Read Only.

Jane

[reader50]

What version of OS X are you running? Snow Leopard is known to be a bit glitchy still, and your problem sounds more like a Finder bug than anything else.

You might try copying them across a few thousand at a time. There should not be issues here - you select 120,000 files for copy, 120,000 get copied.

[ZanyJanie]

I am running Snow Leopard, with Finder Version 10.6.3; so that could be the problem.
I can only hope that Apple fixes the glitches because it's pretty bad when you can't trust a file copy to do it's job.

Thanks again for your suggestion. I'll try copying smaller segments and see if that works.

Jane

[ghporter]

Do you have anything running that could have certain files (some of your pictures) open?

[ZanyJanie]

Thanks for the idea; but I didn't have anything else running that would have the photos in use.

As an update, I tried copying the files in smaller chucks (about 3000 individual folders, copied one at a time). That didn't solve the problem either.

If I open two finder window, go to the folder that contains a photo that didn't copy, and drag it across to my iMac hard drive, it copies fine.

I have my photos stored in a detailed path structure (State > City > Attraction Name > photos). I considered the possibility that the full path name might be too long; but that doesn't seem to be the problem either. Within each folder, the file names all have a consistent prefix followed by a sequence number (named with a multi renamer program). Most of the files within a folder copy perfectly; but then I get one or two that don't copy.

It's still a mystery to me.