Problem Copying To External Hard Drive.

[shep66]

Folks

Excuse my ignorance on this topic but maybe one of you good people can help me.

I have a fairly large iTunes Music directory contained on an external hard drive. For safety/security reasons I'm trying to back it up to another external hard drive (no space on my Mac) but when I try to copy over the iTunes directory I get the following error message :

"You can’t copy “iTunes Music” because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn’t distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames."

There are no files on the destination hard drive so I'm a tad confused.

I'm worried that one hard drive failure and my music collection goes up in flames so do any of you folks have any suggestions on how I can resolve this problem?

Thanks very much.

Shep

 

[BlueRevolution]

Is your system hard drive formatted to Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive)?

 

[shep66]

Nope I don't believe so. However I am more than willing to reformat the drive as it doesn't contain any data currently. How should I reformat it and with what format?

 

[HBOC]

i believe you just go into disc ultility and choose the external HD you are wanting to reformat. You may have two different choices, Mac OS Extended, or Mac OS journalized (although i get that option with flash drives, etc.) If you are using this external with your Mac primarily, than I would choose Mac OS Extended, since there is no need to format it any other way. I am unsure what the difference between Extended and Journalized is, however..

 

[BlueRevolution]

Nope I don't believe so. However I am more than willing to reformat the drive as it doesn't contain any data currently. How should I reformat it and with what format?

I'm referring to the other drive, the one you're running your system from.

i believe you just go into disc ultility and choose the external HD you are wanting to reformat. You may have two different choices, Mac OS Extended, or Mac OS journalized (although i get that option with flash drives, etc.) If you are using this external with your Mac primarily, than I would choose Mac OS Extended, since there is no need to format it any other way. I am unsure what the difference between Extended and Journalized is, however..

There are four Mac OS formats:

Mac OS Extended
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)

Normally your system is formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Journaling is a process that provides a measure of protection against data corruption, so it's a good idea to leave that on.


What I was asking is whether your system drive is formatted to one of the case-sensitive formats.

 

[shep66]

BlueRevolution you cracked it for me (I think). I reformatted the target drive to be "case sensitive, journaled", tried the copy again and everything worked sweetly.

Thanks very much for your help.

Shep

 

[KB007]

Thanks I had similar problem and formatted to fat32 allowing me to transfer files to the PC
thanks for helping

I'm referring to the other drive, the one you're running your system from.



There are four Mac OS formats:

Mac OS Extended
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)

Normally your system is formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Journaling is a process that provides a measure of protection against data corruption, so it's a good idea to leave that on.


What I was asking is whether your system drive is formatted to one of the case-sensitive formats.

 

[icantbebothered]

I have run out of room on my external hard drive and have a large drive that I have already in use for photos. I want to move the music off my small drive to my large drive but I am getting the error as stated in the other posts.

You can’t copy “Music” because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn’t distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames.

The problem is..I have a ton of stuff on that large drive and no where to put it so that I can reformat. Any ideas or suggestions??

 

[SiggyN]

Folks

Excuse my ignorance on this topic but maybe one of you good people can help me.

I have a fairly large iTunes Music directory contained on an external hard drive. For safety/security reasons I'm trying to back it up to another external hard drive (no space on my Mac) but when I try to copy over the iTunes directory I get the following error message :

"You can’t copy “iTunes Music” because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn’t distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames."

There are no files on the destination hard drive so I'm a tad confused.

I'm worried that one hard drive failure and my music collection goes up in flames so do any of you folks have any suggestions on how I can resolve this problem?

Thanks very much.

Shep

I am facing this same situation Shep. Annoying. I copied a Everweb web creation file from my iMac to a mobile hard disk and worked on this file during a 4 months tour of Europe using my Mac laptop. When I came back I tried to transfer the file back on my computer and got the message above. Thinking it was the original file on the computer that was the problem I deleted it but the message continued to come up each time I tried to copy it on to the computer. The same when I tried to copy the file to another MacBook and even an SD disk. I am now in a quandary as the file works fine if I run the file from my mobile hard drive but worry that it is the only copy I have and, just like your music file, I cannot back it up. Still scratching my head how I can copy the file back to my computer.

Apart from re initialising my computer hard drive (which I do not ever imagining I would do) I don't know where to go to next to solve this rather crazy situation that Apply has created for me.

Siggy

 

[Basic75]

Apart from re initialising my computer hard drive (which I do not ever imagining I would do) I don't know where to go to next to solve this rather crazy situation that Apply has created for me.

Have you tried with cp(1) in Terminal.app?

 

[SiggyN]

Have you tried with cp(1) in Terminal.app?

I'm not that technical. Sounds complicated. cp(1)?

 

[Basic75]

I'm not that technical. Sounds complicated. cp(1)?

The cp (copy) command in the shell. It might be able to do things that Finder doesn't want to. If you haven't used the shell before you might want to look into a basic tutorial.

 

[SiggyN]

Thank you. I will have a look and report back.

 

[Brian33]

I copied a Everweb web creation file from my iMac to a mobile hard disk and worked on this file during a 4 months tour of Europe using my Mac laptop. When I came back I tried to transfer the file back on my computer and got the message above. Thinking it was the original file on the computer that was the problem I deleted it but the message continued to come up each time I tried to copy it on to the computer. The same when I tried to copy the file to another MacBook and even an SD disk.

My guess, that seems to fit your issue:

I think your external disk is formatted "case-sensitive". I think your Mac disk is formatted case-INsensitive (that is the default, and normal). I think the "Everweb web creation file" is not just a single file -- either it is a directory (folder) of files, or it is a "package".

(A package looks like a single file in Finder, but is actually a folder of files. In Finder, you can right-click a package file and there will be a choice to "Show Package Contents".)

Further, I think the Everweb contains two or more files (within the same folder) that have names that differ only by case. For example, "index.html" and "index.HTML", or "foo.txt" and "Foo.txt". When you try to copy these files to a normal case-insensitive file system, macOS wouldn't know what to do and just throws up the error message. If I'm right in my guesses, you'd get the error even when trying to copy the Everweb "file" to an empty disk! (Assuming default formatting.)

If the "everweb" think really contains multiple files, I suppose you'd have to find which two (or more) have the "same" names, differing only in capitalization. Then what? Rename one? Delete one? It depends upon what the files are for...

Of course, I may be totally wrong!

 

[SiggyN]

Hi Brian. Thank you for taking the time to explain the situation. You are correct in every regard. I have worked with EverWeb and they assure me the file(s) work ok. So it's simply a change in format by Apple that has upset everything. Some people have suggested that I work in Terminal to transfer the files but I am not skilled here so am reluctant to give this a go. Would rather see if what you are saying will work - ie: I will rename the files within and see if that copies. It's been rather frustrating but I can now appreciate what has happened. I've wasted many hours to get to this point but at least it has made me back up my file to another location (using Google Drive). Hopefully I can take it from here.