Photos stops copying to external drive

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Photos stops copying to external drive

Strange problem. I want to move my Photo’s library to an external drive before buying a new iMac as it’s taking up far too much room on my internal drive. (The library is about 650GB). I’ve continually backed my computer up with Time Machine & Carbon Copy Cloner with no difficulties. However, when I try to copy the Photos Library to a the external drive it stops when it has reached the 364.80GB point with the message “The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “Photos Library” can’t be read or written. (Error code -36)”. I think it was a different error code the other times. I’ve reformatted the external drive a couple of times in case the issue was there, but it hasn’t helped. Running High Sierra.

Suggestions?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Dec 17, 2022 11:54 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 6

15,757 points

Dec 18, 2022 08:48 AM in response to Brian Kingstone

The Photos Library in High Sierra was quite different from newer versions. But that shouldn't keep you from copying it to an external drive. Be sure the external drive is formatted as either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. There are no other choices. And the drive can never have had Time Machine on it. (Time Machine works great but, like my cat, can tolerate no other critters in its domain.)

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

It could be that there is a file inside the Library package that causes no trouble just sitting there, but can't be read by the OS. How are you copying this file-- drag and drop? Copy and Paste?

You can copy an individual folder (though not a single package) with Carbon Copy Cloner. Have you tried moving the Library to a new separate folder on your internal drive, and using CCC to copy that?

Is your Library connected to iCloud? If so, you can create a new library on the external drive, make it the System Library, and just wait for it to sync with iCloud. You'd think that the offending file, it that's it, could not have been copied to iCloud, so that should work. This may be the best thing to do, since it would eliminate the problem.

If you aren't connected to iCloud, it's worth a try. You have to pay Apple for the iCloud space you'd use, but it might be worth the ten bucks for the first month, and you might like it.

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Answer 2

Dec 18, 2022 06:41 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Thanks. Yes, MacOS Extended Journaled. New external drive, never been used for anything before. Yes, Drag & Drop, not cut and paste. iCloud was never really an option...too expensive for that large of a space, and it would have taken DAYS to upload. I suppose as a desperate last measure, but...

I'd already solved the problem before getting your reply though. I figured that it had to be some particular file within Photos that was causing the problem, but one which hadn't been a problem for either Time Machine or CCC before this. Something like Disk Warrior wasn't an optioin as my drive is SSD and DW can't handle that yet. So, since I couldn't access the individual Photos Library through TM, I thought I'd try just copying the Library from my CCC backup. Worked perfectly, although for some reason 45 of my most recent imports weren't there. That was an easy fix. Once it had been copied, I checked that it all was working from the external, and then reformated my computer from TM. Good thing I did that in that order, as, for some reason, TM did not load my Photos Library. It's never done anything like that before. Without the CCC backup, I would have lost 650GB of photos. Anyway...all's well that ends well.

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Answer 3

Dec 19, 2022 06:24 AM in response to Brian Kingstone

Glad you've got it going!

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Photos stops copying to external drive

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