I have a Mac running Panther and a PC running XP, that are connected 
with a router.  They can mount each others shared drives, and transfer 
files.  However, some files do not want to copy, and XP is really bad at 
handling them.

For example, I tried to copy over my iTunes library, and I would get 
about 1/3 of the way through, and get the message "cannot copy file 
:icon:", and have no choice but to terminate the transfer.  I don't even 
have an option to copy everything else, and ignore :icon:, whatever that is.

I have seen other files too that are invisible on the Mac, interfere 
with transfer to the PC, but the icon one comes to mind as happening 
most often.

Anyone else get this behavior?  Is there an easy way around it?  The 
reason it's important is because I have a spare hard drive inside the 
PC, and until I get a nice-sized external drive, I'd like to use it as a 
temporary backup solution, but running into road blocks and having to 
re-copy things in pieces makes it impossible.

In article <ce07gi$2l9f$1@netnews.upenn.edu>,
 David Besack <daveREMOVEbesack@mac.com> wrote:

> I have a Mac running Panther and a PC running XP, that are connected 
> with a router.  They can mount each others shared drives, and transfer 
> files.  However, some files do not want to copy, and XP is really bad at 
> handling them.
> 
> For example, I tried to copy over my iTunes library, and I would get 
> about 1/3 of the way through, and get the message "cannot copy file 
> :icon:", and have no choice but to terminate the transfer.  I don't even 
> have an option to copy everything else, and ignore :icon:, whatever that is.
> 
> I have seen other files too that are invisible on the Mac, interfere 
> with transfer to the PC, but the icon one comes to mind as happening 
> most often.
> 
> Anyone else get this behavior?  Is there an easy way around it?  The 
> reason it's important is because I have a spare hard drive inside the 
> PC, and until I get a nice-sized external drive, I'd like to use it as a 
> temporary backup solution, but running into road blocks and having to 
> re-copy things in pieces makes it impossible.

I've seen the same thing... in my case it was from a Jaguar machine to a 
Win2K machine. On the Mac, filename character restrictions are nothing 
like on Windows, and Windows bails whenever it sees an illegal character 
in the filename.

Do you plan to do anything with the files once they are on the spare 
drive, or are you putting them there just for archival purposes? If it's 
just for archival purposes, compress the folders on the Mac and just 
copy the zip file over to the PC. If you plan to use the files on the 
PC, then, sorry I can't help you... I just piecemealed my stuff over.

David Besack wrote:
> I have a Mac running Panther and a PC running XP, that are connected 
> with a router.  They can mount each others shared drives, and transfer 
> files.  However, some files do not want to copy, and XP is really bad at 
> handling them.
> 
> For example, I tried to copy over my iTunes library, and I would get 
> about 1/3 of the way through, and get the message "cannot copy file 
> :icon:", and have no choice but to terminate the transfer.  I don't even 
> have an option to copy everything else, and ignore :icon:, whatever that 
> is.
> 
> I have seen other files too that are invisible on the Mac, interfere 
> with transfer to the PC, but the icon one comes to mind as happening 
> most often.
> 
> Anyone else get this behavior?  Is there an easy way around it?  The 
> reason it's important is because I have a spare hard drive inside the 
> PC, and until I get a nice-sized external drive, I'd like to use it as a 
> temporary backup solution, but running into road blocks and having to 
> re-copy things in pieces makes it impossible.

Why don't you put the spare hard disk in the Mac? Problem solved.

Rob

hi :

i had the same problem when i started using mac's and pc's in a
mixed environment.


when the copying process  gives you the message
'cannot copy file'   it says  which file you cannot copy.

Go to that file on the mac,  and  rename the file  with
a windows  'accepted'  filename.

then,  start the copy again.
Maybe it will stop on another file,   and you will have to rename that
file too.
and so on, and so on, ....

finally,  you'll be able to copy all the files.

remember when naming files on a mac to use   windows appropriate file
names,  so in the future  you'll avoid this kind of  annoying things


cheers








"David Besack" <daveREMOVEbesack@mac.com> wrote in message
news:ce07gi$2l9f$1@netnews.upenn.edu...
> I have a Mac running Panther and a PC running XP, that are connected
> with a router.  They can mount each others shared drives, and transfer
> files.  However, some files do not want to copy, and XP is really bad at
> handling them.
>
> For example, I tried to copy over my iTunes library, and I would get
> about 1/3 of the way through, and get the message "cannot copy file
> :icon:", and have no choice but to terminate the transfer.  I don't even
> have an option to copy everything else, and ignore :icon:, whatever that
is.
>
> I have seen other files too that are invisible on the Mac, interfere
> with transfer to the PC, but the icon one comes to mind as happening
> most often.
>
> Anyone else get this behavior?  Is there an easy way around it?  The
> reason it's important is because I have a spare hard drive inside the
> PC, and until I get a nice-sized external drive, I'd like to use it as a
> temporary backup solution, but running into road blocks and having to
> re-copy things in pieces makes it impossible.

> Why don't you put the spare hard disk in the Mac? Problem solved.
> 
> Rob

It's a laptop :)

> Do you plan to do anything with the files once they are on the spare 
> drive, or are you putting them there just for archival purposes? If it's 
> just for archival purposes, compress the folders on the Mac and just 
> copy the zip file over to the PC. If you plan to use the files on the 
> PC, then, sorry I can't help you... I just piecemealed my stuff over.

Thanks for the idea.  There's also the possibility of using Backup, but 
I've neveer used it to save to a network drive.

If you desire - I can post (I have at work not at home) an applescript 
you can use to rename files - it is drag and drop -

it replaces illegal filename characters with a '-'.
illegal characters include (but are not limited to):
/
\
.. - as an ending character by itself
" " - (a space) as an ending character

these come to mind, there are many others.

Look under this thread on Tues.

David Besack wrote:

> I have a Mac running Panther and a PC running XP, that are connected 
> with a router.  They can mount each others shared drives, and transfer 
> files.  However, some files do not want to copy, and XP is really bad at 
> handling them.
> 
> For example, I tried to copy over my iTunes library, and I would get 
> about 1/3 of the way through, and get the message "cannot copy file 
> :icon:", and have no choice but to terminate the transfer.  I don't even 
> have an option to copy everything else, and ignore :icon:, whatever that 
> is.
> 
> I have seen other files too that are invisible on the Mac, interfere 
> with transfer to the PC, but the icon one comes to mind as happening 
> most often.
> 
> Anyone else get this behavior?  Is there an easy way around it?  The 
> reason it's important is because I have a spare hard drive inside the 
> PC, and until I get a nice-sized external drive, I'd like to use it as a 
> temporary backup solution, but running into road blocks and having to 
> re-copy things in pieces makes it impossible.

Fetch, Rover, Fetch wrote:
> If you desire - I can post (I have at work not at home) an applescript 
> you can use to rename files - it is drag and drop -
> 
> it replaces illegal filename characters with a '-'.
> illegal characters include (but are not limited to):
> /
> \
> . - as an ending character by itself
> " " - (a space) as an ending character
> 
> these come to mind, there are many others.

That's okay.  These aren't files I named myself, they seem to be files 
created by apps.  I decided since I don't seem to have any trouble 
copying the other way (PC to Mac), I'd get an external drive, hook it to 
  my Powerbook, and backup that way.