Can't copy, move or delete files!?!

[Michael]

Hi.
I have no idea what has happened to my MacBook Pro M1. Applications works, but I cannot copy files, move them or trash them. Everything just stucks at "0 % of ...", even with a small 1 mb file. Also – I cant move or change name on documents made in Pages within the app. Editing in Pages works, as other apps. It seems like it is just file handling that is stuck. Both within the computer and to external disks.
I have restarted, done Disk check (nothing found), started in protected mode (not sure if that is the right name in English) and made a Disk check. Still no faults found.
I lean towards a total reinstallation – but can't do a backup first, so ... (Sigh)
Any ideas?

 

[TonyAguila]

Hi.
I have no idea what has happened to my MacBook Pro M1. Applications works, but I cannot copy files, move them or trash them. Everything just stucks at "0 % of ...", even with a small 1 mb file. Also – I cant move or change name on documents made in Pages within the app. Editing in Pages works, as other apps. It seems like it is just file handling that is stuck. Both within the computer and to external disks.
I have restarted, done Disk check (nothing found), started in protected mode (not sure if that is the right name in English) and made a Disk check. Still no faults found.
I lean towards a total reinstallation – but can't do a backup first, so ... (Sigh)
Any ideas?

Try restarting into Safe Mode and see how it behaves. Instead of resorting to a full reinstallation, I would first try reinstalling macOS. If your MBP is the 13" 2020 model, it would have come with Big Sur, and should be able to run the latest version, Sonoma.

If you can boot into Recovery, and have an internet connection, you should be able to reinstall macOS that way.

By the way, a cheap alternative for a Time Machine backup drive is your SD reader. There are now micro SD cards in 2-terabytes, although I would not put too much trust in them yet. The 1-terabyte cards should be more reliable and affordable. And they can be formatted as APFS. I haven’t had a need to use them as TM drives, but they work very well as macOS installers.

 

[Michael]

Try restarting into Safe Mode and see how it behaves. Instead of resorting to a full reinstallation, I would first try reinstalling macOS. If your MBP is the 13" 2020 model, it would have come with Big Sur, and should be able to run the latest version, Sonoma.

If you can boot into Recovery, and have an internet connection, you should be able to reinstall macOS that way.

By the way, a cheap alternative for a Time Machine backup drive is your SD reader. There are now micro SD cards in 2-terabytes, although I would not put too much trust in them yet. The 1-terabyte cards should be more reliable and affordable. And they can be formatted as APFS. I haven’t had a need to use them as TM drives, but they work very well as macOS installers.

Thanks Tony. I made a OS installation. Seems to work.
And luckily, I was able to make a backup copy to a external SSD, although no copying (or any file handling) worked on the Mac's internal SSD.

 

[TonyAguila]

Thanks Tony. I made a OS installation. Seems to work.
And luckily, I was able to make a backup copy to a external SSD, although no copying (or any file handling) worked on the Mac's internal SSD.

That still doesn’t sound right especially for a fairly new Mac (M1). How much SSD storage and memory do you have? Maybe you are simply running out of space (both storage and memory). If you are down to around 25% free space in the boot drive, and, more so, if you have limited memory, even more SSD space will be taken up by memory swapping and virtual memory.

Are you not able to do file handling while running from the internal drive? See if it makes any difference running in Safe Mode. And whenever you sense any of the problems coming up, launch Activity Monitor, select the Memory tab, and check to see how much memory pressure is happening. The graph on the bottom will show problems if it does not show up as green.

I have been testing memory pressure on my Studio so I have about ten big apps running at once, all day. Memory pressure has remained low in spite of over 50% of RAM in use, but I have 2-terabytes of storage, and that’s why I never see Swap being used.

 

[Michael]

I have a 1TB SSD with less than 10 % available. May be a problem. I'll move some to an external SSD. Thanks for pointing it out.
And for the memory check advice.
Anyway, things seems to work after the reinstallation. Cheers!

 

[TonyAguila]

I have a 1TB SSD with less than 10 % available. May be a problem. I'll move some to an external SSD. Thanks for pointing it out.
And for the memory check advice.
Anyway, things seems to work after the reinstallation. Cheers!

10%? Ouch! I get nervous when my startup drive goes over 50% full. That’s how come I have so many other external drives to store data, and a couple of 12-terabyte Time Machine drives. If you don’t have immediate plans to add more external storage, at least get additional iCloud storage from Apple and then turn on Optimize Mac Storage in System Settings so that macOS can automatically offload your data to iCloud to free up local storage. This will, of course, slow you down a bit when macOS has to upload and download your data from cloud storage as needed.

When you have resolved your external storage needs and can free up space on the startup drive, you can then turn off Optimize Mac Storage to get rid of the lag whenever macOS has to download and upload to iCloud.

 

[MilkandGin]

When that happens, it sometimes helps to boot into recovery mode, access disk utility, and run first aid on the various partitions (lowest level to highest). Click 'show all devices' in the view menu first.

Also, as Tony said, I think I pay like $2.99/month for 200 gigs of iCloud storage. iCloud storage is exceedingly inexpensive.