Catalina on Mac Mini won't Allow copying folders.

[Woody Woodworth]

Just got a refurbed Mac Mini (circa 2012) with a new 250Gig solid state hard drive installed.

Primary reason was to have a faster machine for doing back ups and transfers of older hard drives to newer larger drives without dying of old age in the process with my old iMac 10.6.8 that still runs Photoshop 5 from CD's.

Two drives that are able to copy back and forth still work on the Older Machine.

When Loaded on the new Catalina Mac Mini the drives show up, you can use preview to see contents BUT when I drag any size folder from one into another they kick out. I am able to copy a folder from a drive into Mac Mini desktop just fine and files open.

That file will also Kick Out of the external Hard Drive.

After all this I took both drives back to the older iMac and they copy files one to another just fine, but slow as Southern California Freeways at 4pm on any Friday.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

Sounds like it may be a formatting or permissions issue.

-How are the Mac mini SSD and the external drives formatted: APFS/Mac OS Extended/FAT/ExFAT?
-Are any of them encrypted or case-sensitive?
-Is Ignore ownership on this volume enabled on the external drives?

C

 

[Woody Woodworth]

As I mentioned I have both Drives on another older and slower iMac and they've had No Issue trading copied files back and forth.

I'm not sure of about any of these forematting designations. Should they ALL be the same, What's the preferred status of these?

APFS/ (((( Mac OS Extended )))) /FAT/ExFAT?
I would think is the Best formatt.?!!!

I've had many hard drives, thumb drives and SD cards go in and out of the older iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Never a hint of this in 10 years.

I didn't install the SSD so I don't know. The guy that did that install is away for another 2 weeks in Turkey.
My main use of this much faster computer is Film Scanning and to Clean Up a Hand full of Drives into a New Master Volume to then back up and go from there.

It seems that would be where the problem lies.

If is was not formatted in Mac OS Extended would changing it require reinstalling the Catalina OS?

Thanks for your help,

Woody

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

To check how the external drives are formatted:
-Right-click/Option-click on their icon on the Desktop, and choose Get Info
-A window will appear that will list it in the Format: section at the top of the window

When using external drives with Macs, it is best to use them with a Mac formatting scheme: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, depending on what Mac(s) you will be using them with.

Mac OS Extended (Journaled): Can be mounted and read/written to by all Macs
APFS: Can only be mounted and read/written to by Macs running macOS Sierra or later
FAT/exFAT: Windows disk formats that are used when drives will be connected to Macs and PCs running Windows (also the default of most new external drives, especially those that don't state they are Mac formatted)

The internal SSD running Catalina will be using APFS, which is required for macOS. The mini should be able to mount and read/write to the externals just fine, within the limits of the connection type's speed. What connection are they using - USB 2.0?

It still sounds like possibly a permissions issue - did you check in the Get Info window of the external drives if Ignore ownership on this volume enabled?

C