Desairem

Why does copying a file fail in SyncTime but work in the Finder?

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SyncTime uses the standard macOS file copy function, which is the base of file copy operations for many other apps as well.

Since what the Finder does is a secret only known to Apple, it’s not possible for third-party app developers to perfectly mimic its behaviour, and hence it can happen that copying a file in the Finder behaves differently than copying it with another app.

If the source or destination volume is a NAS or server, you may get unexpected errors if the vendor of the NAS or server tested support for the Finder, but not for the standard macOS file copy function. In order to allow other apps to copy files from or to that volume, the vendor should support this function as well.

Please contact me first and show me the error you get, so that I can assess whether it’s something that your hardware vendor should probably fix. If this is the case, you can proceed to ask your hardware vendor for support:

  1. Download this zip archive and unpack it. It contains an app named copyfile and another zip archive named copyfile-source.
  2. Run the copyfile app. The app presents two open panels: in the first one, select a file or directory to be copied; in the second one, select the destination directory where the source file should be copied to.
  3. If an error occurs during the copy operation, you can proceed with the next step. If no error occurs and it looks like the source file was copied correctly to the destination, it means that the issue is somewhere else. In any case, please let me know the outcome.
  4. Contact your hardware vendor by attaching the copyfile-source zip archive, which contains the source code that allows them to reproduce the issue, and writing something along the lines of “X doesn’t seem to correctly support the standard copyfile function used across Apple products, causing an error when trying to copy a file from/to X with the backup software SyncTime. Attached you find the source code for a test app created by the SyncTime developer with which I can reproduce the issue. If you have any questions to the SyncTime developer, you can also contact him at info@desairem.com”.