error 36, badly. iCloud drive was problematic.

Question

error 36, badly. iCloud drive was problematic.

not a question, more of an experience i just had for days, and found a solution by miscela, hope it helps.

i was not able to copy any folder from the startup drive if the folder was inside icloud drive, to the same drive or to external drives. i can copy files, but not folders.

folder copy was working from external drive to the startup one, and also from other directories, for example from application folders to desktop (icloud).

the error said that the finder cannot complete the operation because some data in “” cannot be read or written, not showing the folder name. the issue was definitely related to icloud, so i entirely disabled icloud drive and re-enabled it. problem solved, no more error 36.

dot_clean did nothing.

Mac Studio, macOS 12.6

Posted on Sep 18, 2022 11:41 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,250 points

Oct 27, 2022 12:21 AM in response to allen_31

1. Run Dot_Clean command from Terminal

Irrelevant in this case because the file system is Mac and can store metadata within the file

Hope it helps!

kappesantecdm already solved the problem. It was a corrupt iCloud Drive.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,250 points

Oct 22, 2022 05:00 AM in response to kappesantecdm

Did you have Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive enabled? If so, how did you handle the files stored there when it asked what to do.

I’m asking In case it turns out the method you chose is important to recovering from the problem

dot_clean does nothing on macOS formatted drives. The Utility removes metadata files that can’t be stored inside the file (FAT formats). On macOS drives, the metadata is stored inside the files so there are no ._ files written to disk.

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Answer 3

Oct 22, 2022 05:12 AM in response to Barney-15E

i had icloud drive enabled, documents and desktop were indeed in my icloud, and the problem was there. once i disabled and re-enabled it, the problem was solved.

when you disable it, you can choose to keep a copy in a backup folder, or just delete the files from your disk. in both ways, the icloud drive remains intact, so when you enable it back, the files in the cloud are synced again.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,250 points

Oct 22, 2022 06:50 AM in response to kappesantecdm

when you disable it, you can choose to keep a copy in a backup folder, or just delete the files from your disk. in both ways, the icloud drive remains intact, so when you enable it back, the files in the cloud are synced again.

That's what I want to document, here. Which option did you choose in case that is relevant to what fixed the problem.

It may just be disabling and re-enabling iCloud Drive. Or, it could be how you chose to manage the Desktop & Document files when you disabled iCloud Drive.

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Answer 5

Oct 22, 2022 10:08 AM in response to Barney-15E

i decided to not keep a backup because who cares. i can (and i checked) always be able to access icloud docs from my phone, for example.

to clarify: the backup is in a particular folder in your home. macos may just download everything and add the ‘backup’ after the original name. i did this on another machine for another purpose, and this is what happened.

when you re-enable icloud, that backup remains intact, the local documents and desktop folders disappear, and the icloud ones are created and filled. again, the backup remain untouched.

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Answer 6

Oct 26, 2022 05:56 AM in response to Barney-15E

for the first machine, the problematic one, i don’t keep a backup.

for the other one i kept just to know what was about, but trashed after i re-enabled the icloud storage.

i haven’t use the backup, in both situations i relied on fresh download only.

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Answer 7

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,250 points

Oct 26, 2022 09:34 AM in response to kappesantecdm

I’m not talking about a backup. I don’t think I can dream up another way to ask what you chose when it asked what to do about the Desktop and Documents folders when you disabled iCloud Drive. The two options are to archive them into a folder or just leave them on iCloud.

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Answer 8

allen_31

Level 2

337 points

Oct 26, 2022 11:15 PM in response to kappesantecdm

Sometimes, when you try to copy files or move them to another location on your Mac system, your finder will display “Error Code 36” that won’t let you perform any data transfer. Usually, Error Code 36 occurs when Finder can’t read/write data from any file. Here, are few DIY troubleshooting methods that you can try to fix the issue:

1. Run Dot_Clean command from Terminal

2. Ensure the file permission is read/write

3. Repair the storage drive using Disk Utility

Hope it helps!

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