Solution to Finder “Error code -36″ in 10.6 when copying folders

Thank you so much!! This has been happening to me for weeks and I had no idea what was going on. My thumb drive is happy again!

I’m seeing this problem when I try to copy (large) files to an external drive that’s formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). When I use the drive on an OS X 10.5 system, it works fine. It fails only on my 10.6.2 Mac.

I’ve reformatted the drive, and the problem persists.

Any possible explanations for this?

Thank you very much … certainly this problem appeared when Snow Leopard is updated to version 10.6.2 … until today, when I read in (http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2231572&start=90&tstart=0) solution that directs me here … thanks again for the solution clearly and accurately.

thanks a lot for the tip. That’s great.

It works! thanks for the help.

Wow…thank you thank you and thank you. I have been wrecking my brain on this for at least a few days now. Now finally found the solution that works.Just to clarify.
After lunched terminal, type “dot_clean ” Make sure you have space after the word dot_clean. Then drag the folder into terminal window and hit enter. Thanks again.

This has been happening to me since August when I updated the OS to Leopard. I can’t thank you enough for your kind help.

Legend! Been trying to figure this out for ages!

Also, following on from Oats post above you can select multiple folders and drop in to terminal, will still work.

THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS IS SO HELPFUL!!!! Finally able to clear away those ._ files and it Fixed the error code -36 issue I was having

FANTASTIC !!!!!!!!!
Fixed, done, easy

You are the best !

Thank you, Masked Man!!

It works for:
error code -36 <–As you describe above. (It fixed a problem I had last month.)
error code -35 <–I gave it a shot … it seemed to work. (With a funny error message … which i ignored.)

Both, while trying to copy large files on/off a Windows formatted thumb-drive. (there is probably a more technical description for what happened. I don't care. It works now.)

Thanks again.

Thanks for this it explains why I can’t read files/folders on my FAT formatted NAS box. do you have any idea how I get round the fact that I can’t read anything on it now (the NAS box), unless I copy it back to my iMac’s drive?
I tried your fix, but as soon as I copy it back to the NAS box, the same Error -36 rears it’s ugly head again.

Thanks…It worked great.

Awesome, cheers man, this has been driving me crazy, this will keep me sane until the updaye! Good work.:)

Thanks. This worked perfectly.

I’m having the same issue as Car. When I attempt to use dot_clean, Terminal responds “/Users/James/Desktop/iTunes Music: is a directory”

Also, I checked to make sure that the spaces in the directory name were being escaped per another comment, and they are. Here’s exactly what goes on in Terminal:

James-Likeness-Mac-Pro:~ James$ dot_clean
usage: dot_clean [-fmnpsv] [--keep=[mostrecent|dotbar|native]] [directory ...]
James-Likeness-Mac-Pro:~ James$ /Users/James/Desktop/iTunes\ Music
-bash: /Users/James/Desktop/iTunes Music: is a directory

Does anyone have any idea what I can do? I’ve isolated the error to being directory related – I can transfer files over without problems. Thanks!!

I LOVE YOU!!!!!! THANK YOU!

Thank you so much. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the last couple of days. You’ve really made my week-end! Thanks again.

THANKA!

Lost a lot of time on this till the fix here.

Can’t believe Apple let such a bug be.

NOOK,
It looks like you dragged a file into Terminal instead of a folder. This only works with folders/directories.

Thank you so much! I tried other “fixes” and they didn’t work. This worked! You just saved me tons of time in work-arounds!

I’m seeing a similar issue with copying folders from OS X 10.6.2 client to a Windows file share, except it’s an error -50. Any chance this might work?

thank you very much for sharing.
u the man.

Thank you very much. Need PC compatibility for work.

This is just one in a long list of problems I have experienced with Snow Leopard… Really wish I had never upgraded!!!

Thanks again

THANK YOU! This totally solved my problem. Backing up right now.

This didn’t work the first few times I tried it but then I realized there was a space at the end of my folder name. When I deleted the space, it worked!

Thank you so much, you are great and it works perfectly.

Words can’t describe how thankful I am. I was about to lose more than 200GB of important files when I found your simple and clever solution. Thank you so much!

Awesome, works perfectly. It was driving me insane!!! Thank You

Thanks a lot buddy! This helped me like anything when critically needed! Thumbs up :)

Thank you! I had a school project and when i tried to put it on a drive i had no idea what was going on.

This worked perfectly for me once I updated the file path to eliminate any spaces (just renamed the top level folder). It worked recursively across 4 levels of subfolders for 100 Gigs of music. Thank you sooo much.

Gotta love the web

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! …..Did I say THANK YOU?!?

You just saved me soooo much grief.

Thank you so much, like others I have been wrecking my brain trying to figure this out and thanks to you now I know. It is so great having you around to solve those mystery problems. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Confirmed fixed; no more such troubles in 10.6.3

It’s not fixed, also this doesn’t work.

The new update (4/4/2010) did not fix it for me. I’m having troubles copying onto a windows FTP server through WEBDAV.

I’ve been having the error code 36 for a while now…I tried the dot clean method- unsuccessful. I recently downloaded the 10.6.3 and the files still didn’t transfer.
I called Apple Care! Finder-Go-Utilities–click on indented ‘My Book’ then click Repair Disk..then click Verify Disk….and then magically I could transfer my files back to hard drive. Hope this helps! Wish I had called Apple a long time ago.

It works, but the problem is that if you want to move back the folder (or any file inside) at the primitive site (to a HD HFS+), the same error 36, don´t let you do it.

Its like if the file could have inside the DS_Store.

Solutions?

The problem is with my external HD box. It doesn’t work.

I got this error whilst trying to copy a large file (27Gb) from one MacBook to another over the network. Both MacBooks are running 10.6.3 although the source MacBook was built circa Jan 2008 and the target is brand new. It repeatedly failed after transferring around 400Mb with the error: “The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data can’t be read or written. (Error code -36)”

The solution turned out to be quite simple. I was trying to use SMB to transfer the files. Simply changing to using AFP allowed the file and an even larger one (32Gb) to be transferred successfully.

It seems there is a fundamental problem with Microsoft-based file storage/protocols…

I still get this error regardless of the update and such. it works when i have it in the other formats but i need it in Fat32…could the HD be done for?

Odin,
Since your issue does not involve a FAT-formatted drive, you are experiencing something unrelated to the problem this article covers. But I’ll try to help anyway. Is this the only file you’re having trouble with? Have you tried duplicating the file (Cmd + D) and then moving the duplicated file to the external drive? Or maybe copy the file to a different external drive, then copy it again from there to the drive you want to put it on?

Have you tried calling AppleCare or visiting an Apple Store? I wouldn’t take anything on Apple’s support discussion boards as a real response from them.

Thanks, Ant – I didn’t see your suggestion until the page refreshed with my latest snarky comment. First, sorry – I now see that my comment is a bit misplaced in this forum. Confused after searching wide for a solution. I did try your suggestions, which unfortunately didn’t work for my problem. My past AppleCare experience wasn’t useful – the expert gave up, and a non-expert friend later helped troubleshoot and fix the problem. No time to go to the distant AppleStore with a project due. The problem was solved, though, the hard way. Again, thanks for the response.

If you are STILL having this problem after 10.6.3 like me the problem is probably to do with the ‘com.apple.ResourceFork’ extended property on the file.

To see if this is the issue do a ‘ls -l’ on the dir in question and see if any files have an ‘@’ symbol .. if so the file wont copy to windows OS.

To remove:

cp -rX

Actually, that is not the problem. I tried your fix, it did not work in my case. What does work, go in to your Terminal, cd to the directory and remove the hidden unix file .DS_Store with the command “rm .DS_Store” you can look at the file with the command “ls -a” … one you remove that file, you can then copy over the directory.

It’d be great if you could put the update at the top of this article, instead of at the end, as if you’ve already updated then going through the steps is a bit of a waste of time…

Thank you! You’re “the Man™”… Saved me a lot of headaches…

This is bullshit… your solution is great ONCE. But doing this everytime I want to copy something is a pain in the ass. Apple should do something about it

I hate this so much. I HAVE to back up to my external, but NOTHING works. Often I don’t even get the error 36 message. The copy window just freezes and I can’t quit it or stop it, all I can do is force shutdown my macbook. My external is partitioned – one is Mac OS Extended and the other one obviously FAT, where the problem is. In disk utility, when clicking on Info, it tells me there are no files on the drive (although there are, and 150GB is used) and on the Mac partition (which is empty) it says there are 115 files! WTF? I hate steven jobs