Lion file copy and special characters

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druxar

Registered
I have been a windows user for 20 years and had enough, mostly due to Vista since 2007 and I just spontaneously went and bought a 13.3" MacbookPro 3 weeks ago, which came with Lion.

So far I'm having WORSE problems than those I left behind. For one thing, just trying to migrate my files from external hard drives on USB docks isn't even going smoothly.

The most current identified glitch seems to be files that contain special characters like accents. I have two external HD's from windows, one is NTFS and the other is EXFAT which I was trying to use as a dual citizenship file copy drive between mac and windows. When I have either of these mounted from a USB dock and I open the folder that contains files with special characters, those files don't appear in the folder but I know they're there, as confirmed when I bring the dock back over to windows on the separate laptop to confirm.

I tried using terminal to copy the whole folder to see if it was a Finder glitch, but when it encounters those special character files it KNOWS they are there and then reports that the files aren't found or something like that, so it skips them.

When I try putting the drive back on the windows laptop and sharing that same folder, I can finally SEE those fancy character files showing up in Finder, but when I try to copy them over to mac I get 8058 error.

What's going on? Copying files should be basic stuff. I'm about ready to go back to windows to get away from mac now instead of the other way around.
 
druxar said:
...

So far I'm having WORSE problems than those I left behind. For one thing, just trying to migrate my files from external hard drives on USB docks isn't even going smoothly.

The most current identified glitch seems to be files that contain special characters like accents. I have two external HD's from windows, one is NTFS and the other is EXFAT which I was trying to use as a dual citizenship file copy drive between mac and windows. When I have either of these mounted from a USB dock and I open the folder that contains files with special characters, those files don't appear in the folder but I know they're there, as confirmed when I bring the dock back over to windows on the separate laptop to confirm.

....
Click to expand...
OK. If your WORSE problems are flitches in file names between disparate file systems, then you are having no problems at all. Different file systems use different naming conventions. Copying files from one file system to another will cause the occasional hiccup or glitch. It was ever thus. It will ever be. Chill.

Now. How are you trying to copy files between NTFS and the Mac discs and between exFAT and the Mac discs?
 
I'm trying to copy files from those 2 types of drives by using USB docks, mounting them on mac, then either copying and pasting to mac internal drive by dragging and dropping in finder, choosing copy and then paste in the finder menu bar, or by going into terminal and using a recursive cp command.

Failing that, copying across a network to avoid any possible direct hardware plug in issues on mac also doesn't allow copying files with special characters but I can at least see them in the finder folder list on the networked drive.

ps. it's hard to chill when I can't copy files after 3 weeks and $1250 plus tax!
 
Here's a sample of the terminal results I have when trying to copy from a USB dock mounted external NTFS folder.

Lion:Fable Druxar$ ls

Fable - Le temple de la lumière.mp3 Fable - Les bois de gibet.mp3
Fable - Un point à l'horizon.mp3

Lion:Fable Druxar$ cp "Fable - Un point à l'horizon.mp3" /Temp

cp: Fable - Un point à l'horizon.mp3: No such file or directory
Lion:Fable Druxar$


And the destination folder /Temp in the mac internal drive works when I substitute a file name without special characters so the copy command generally seems to work otherwise. So is there something I need to do to make it recognize the special characters or is there some other weird property in the NTFS attributes that needs to be considered in the command?
 
It strikes me that you don't have a clear vision of what you are doing. I have never had a problem with NTFS drives. I simply drag a folder of files from the source drive to the destination drive and then drop. Alternatively, I select a group of files on the source than then drag the selection to the destination where I drop them. There is no need to involve the Finder sidebar or Dock. I have no idea what you are doing with copying and pasting, but you are obviously not doing it correctly. Don't do it until you become more familiar with MacOS X.
 
Well then how are you clicking on folders in the source drive - I thought you need Finder to get into the drive? Maybe if there's another way to "open" a drive and access its contents in the GUI I could circumvent the Finder issue.
 
I've now since tried 2 more things. I took a USB flash drive and formatted as FAT32, put two mp3 files from windows that contain fancy accented A's and E's, they don't show up when I plug the drive into Lion.

Same when I re-format the drive as FAT16.

So that pretty much exhausts all my options of trying to get Lion to recognize files with fancy characters taken from a windows system.

And I'm pretty sure I have a clear perspective on what I'm trying to do - copy files!

Anyone else have any suggestions at this point, something I might be able to use other than "don't use a computer until you know how to use a computer"?
 
Are you good with the command line?

If so, you may want to try a copy via inodes instead of using file handles. Something like:

Code: 
find . -inum | <operation, probably cp -r something something>
 
Well in the future I will look into inodes things for my own purposes (I was born on DOS 3.3 and always preferred command line over windows, and now that I use OSX I will ultimately want to learn all the unix type things)

But I found a quirky resolution (not solution) to my windows to mac file transfer woes.

After trying every possible direct hard drive mounting option I tried just using a network. I have my destination external USB drive on the mac formatted with a mac file system, the source USB external drive on the other windows laptop, and I tried using the mac to open up the shared windows folder and drag files in. Failure.

But when I tried using the windows laptop to open the shared MAC folder for the external mac usb drive, and then from the windows side drag the local windows usb drive contents into the mac networked location, it finally worked and was confirmed back on the mac side locally, the files with weird characters were finally present and in tact.

No idea why it had to be done that way and I still have several TB to go on several backup drives but at least I can do it now.

I had asked several mac people at work about this issue and they're all confused by it too so I feel better that I've just stumbled upon an anomaly and have a work around which should put me in the clear of the issue once I'm all migrated.
 
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