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10.13 rsync, cp, and Finder are all failing to copy files within directories between external drives

I have been trying to copy files between an old external hard drive and a new external hard drive, and every time I copy my files, I go to check the folders on the new drive and there is nothing there. I have done this through:


  • Finder
  • cp -Rnv
  • rsync -vaEu


Each of them fail to copy the information within all folders. What's even crazier is that SOME of the folder contents of certain folders are copied but not all. It seems to happen especially with large folders.

I don't understand the problem. Is my old hard drive corrupt?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.6

Posted on Sep 18, 2024 5:54 AM

Reply
5 replies

Sep 18, 2024 9:04 AM in response to corbinj2k

In Disk Utility>View, select Show all Devices, highlight the top left entry.


Run Disk First Aid on all items in the left panel, from top down.

You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx


Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?


Also, can you paste an example of your command that fails here?

Sep 18, 2024 6:33 PM in response to BDAqua

UPDATE: Ran First aid on the older drive again item by item, it seems to have done the trick. I also manually copied over a few of the missing folder contents in finder earlier today. Currently I am running the "diff" command to check and see if I am missing any files.

I also ran rsync -av --ignore-existing to copy any leftover files after running first aid on the old external drive.

10.13 rsync, cp, and Finder are all failing to copy files within directories between external drives

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