Copying from external HD error code 50

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Level 1

58 points

Copying from external HD error code 50

I have an old external HD that had power problems and which my cousin was able to rescue for me to read on his external docking station. The drive reads fine, and the music files on it are playable on my MacBook Pro M4 2024 using Vox. However, I can't copy the files to another external HD. Any suggestions? Do I need to copy it to the memory in my MacBook Pro first and then copy it to the other drive? Some of the files on it are wma files. Thanks for your suggestions.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.3

Posted on Mar 22, 2025 11:12 PM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

84,629 points

Mar 23, 2025 6:38 AM in response to Andrew Weiss

That's a read/write error. Pull down smaller files first, and big files last.

Bring to a data recovery center that might have a clean room such as http://www.drivesavers.com/ if you have expensive data in the tens of thousands of dollars that aren't backed up elsewhere.

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Answer 2

Mar 23, 2025 9:00 AM in response to Andrew Weiss

if its a MINUS 50,

macerror -50

Mac OS error -50 (paramErr): error in user parameter list

that indicates the list of files to be manipulated was malformed.

a Brody gave excellent advice to copy in smaller groups.

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Answer 3

Andrew Weiss Author

Level 1

58 points

Mar 23, 2025 3:19 PM in response to Andrew Weiss

Thank you both for your advice. Yes, it was a -50 error code. I did try copying one file and got the same error message, but I'll try again. My cousin suggested he could copy the files to a portable SSD, and I may try formatting one and see what happens. The data on this disc is old music files, so old I'd even forgotten that I had them, and not worth any extra expense.

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Copying from external HD error code 50