Difficult copying lots of folders from one location to another

[kat.hayes]

I'm copying lots of folders from a MBP to an external drive with lots of folders. When I select lots of folders on the MBP and drag them to the external it seems to want to place the folders inside of other folders. Sometimes, depending on how I let go it will place the folders inside of other folders or it will place them outside the folders. How do you copy them so they are not put in the other folders?

 

[dianeoforegon]

Try using the Terminal. See https://discussions.apple.com/message/22232388#message22232388

There is no progress bar. I thought it wasn't working until I saw the file actually showing up on the external drive.

 

[Taz Mangus]

I'm copying lots of folders from a MBP to an external drive with lots of folders. When I select lots of folders on the MBP and drag them to the external it seems to want to place the folders inside of other folders. Sometimes, depending on how I let go it will place the folders inside of other folders or it will place them outside the folders. How do you copy them so they are not put in the other folders?

Select the folders to copy, press Cmd-C. On the destination drive select the folder or drive, press Cmd-V.

 

[netnewswireuser]

Use rsync, you will save tons of time and avoid tons of problems.

 

[Lunder89]

Just make sure when drag the files over, to NOT hover your mousepointer over any of the other folders. Point somewhere empty.

 

[DanielGMac]

I'm copying lots of folders from a MBP to an external drive with lots of folders. When I select lots of folders on the MBP and drag them to the external it seems to want to place the folders inside of other folders. Sometimes, depending on how I let go it will place the folders inside of other folders or it will place them outside the folders. How do you copy them so they are not put in the other folders?

Open a terminal.

If you want to see what's going on during the copy. This will copy everything from "folder" in your home directory recursively to an external, mounted, drive called extdrive

rsync -arv /Users/me/folder /Volumes/extdrive

Personally, I would start a log file and wait until the cursor returned then look at the log file to see how it worked or "tail -f" the log file while it was copying so if something happened you still have the information it put out:

rsync -arv /Users/me/folder /Volumes/extdrive > /Users/me/synclogfile.txt &

Advantage of using rsync is if you have to update it later it will only copy the new files and those that have changed. If you just use copy/xcopy or drag and drop it will have to copy every file again.
[doublepost=1502448798][/doublepost]Ohhh, if you want graphical and something that is wonderful should you want to swap out your hard drive to another one (larger or ssd, etc) then:


http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

 

[Fishrrman]

Suggestions:

TURN OFF "Spring loaded folders". This can be disconcerting when folders pop open when unexpected.

If you're still trying to move folders, download "Pathfinder". It's free to download and use for 30 days.
When you open Pathfinder, you can select one (or more) folders, then go to the "Commands" menu and use either "copy to..." or "move to...". Much more precise.