At this point the command should look similar to the following:Īfter you have entered the slash and asterisk characters, enter a space and then locate the folder where you would like to copy the files and drag it to the Terminal window. Remove this space by pressing the delete key once, and then type "/*" to tell the command to specify all items within the parent folder (otherwise the parent folder itself will be the target).
When you do this the full path to the folder will be input at the cursor along with a single space. With one of the above commands and flags typed, continue by typing a single space and then drag the parent folder of your source files to the Terminal window.
These options can be looked up in the manual pages for each program, which can be done by typing "man cp" or "man ditto" in a Terminal window (or doing a Google search), but for most purposes the following options should be adequate: There are many commands that can copy files, but the three most common ones are "cp" (copy), "rsync" (remote sync), and "ditto." As with any terminal command, each of these is a separate program that can take optional flags to tailor its behaviors for your needs, such as allowing it to preserve permissions on the copied files, or allow it to copy recursively into directories, and so on. Then open the OS X Terminal and perform the following steps: There are several commands that can be used to copy files from one location to the next in the Terminal, and using them is fairly straightforward.įirst ensure that you have both the source files and your copy destination mounted and available on your system so you can see them in the Finder. Another approach that may be more successful is to use the OS X Terminal to perform the copy. One approach to overcoming errors that prevent a full copy process is to copy in smaller batches, but this can be time-consuming and impede on organization.
This setup is good from some standpoints since it ensures that all files were copied properly however, it can be frustrating if you are trying to recover as many files as possible from one location such as a hard drive with bad sectors. Because of this, if you copy multiple files and there is an error in accessing one, then the system will cancel the entire process and revert the system to its state before the files were moved. When the Finder copies files, it first catalogs all files to be copied and then treats the copy process as one all-or-nothing copy routine. For the most part, the Finder's copying process is perfectly adequate for moving these files unfortunately it does have some drawbacks that can hinder the copying process. While in OS X people often copy individual files or small groups of files between locations using the Finder, there are times when you might copy hundreds if not thousands of files at a time, especially for the purposes of backing up or migrating data from one drive to another.