Error 0x80070052 The directory or file cannot be created

Question

I am copying photos in the photo gallery from a folder/tag to a scan disk.  I have one file of about 140 photos that will not copy.  The rest have copies with no trouble.   I have created a folder with all of the photos I want to copy.  When they begin the process, all go but the ones from this particular group.  I get the error message above.  Please tell me what I should do, as I have been unsuccessful for the last 1.5 hours at resolving this myself.  Happy New Year!!

Kelly

Answer 1

My next try at finding out what was happening would be to check the location of the files. A root folder of a drive can only contain so many files, (depending on the file system used, like Fat32 or NTFS). I would count the number of successful files in the root, and see if you are over that, based on the File System restraints. When you rightclick a drive, and Properties, it shows the file system in use for that drive.

Errors Creating Files or Folders in the Root Directory: 

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Rating posts helps other usersMark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

Answer 2

Chuck Estep said:

Mark,

This is Chuck Estep.  Saw your post and tried the two suggestions.  Still not able to proceed with copying pictures from my c drive to a jump drive.  I've got plenty of space on both devices too.

Got any other suggestions master jedi?

It's likely that the jump drive is formatted with Fat16. I suggest saving whatever files on the jump drive you wamt, and formatting the drive with Fat32 or NTFS. Rightclicking the drive in Explorer should put you there. You are probably seeing something like a format for UFD or Fat (Standard)http://communities.sandisk.com/sandisk/board/message?board.id=u3&thread.id=3248

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Rating posts helps other usersMark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

Answer 3

Thank you Mark, your solution to try a subfolder has worked for me too after hours of frusteration.

Answer 4

I am new to root drives etc. Ihave a hard drive ithas 29,000 pictures on it, in multiple folders I recently received the  0x80070052 error. my hard dirve is formatted fat32 It is  500gband I havent used half of it. I tried to delete some files but I am unable to any help??? Seems weirdthatI hvea largehard drive and can not use it. I have permission to access the pictures ( ownership) Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 5

Does anybody know what the maximum number of files and/or directories can be in the root directory of a FAT32 formatted bootable external drive?

OR...

When doing a mass copy from an NTFS drive to a FAT32 drive, and I get the 0x80070052 error and choose skip the file and check the box that says, "do this for all errors of this type", is there some kind of a log file which will indicate exactly which files did not get copied?

How did this happen?, you may ask. Well, I reinstalled Windows Vista Home Premium on a computer with a 250Gb hard drive. When I did that, it took the old system that would not boot AT ALL anymore, and put it all in a directory called Windows.Old - - and just about filled the whole drive.

Thinking there might be something of value in Windows.Old (like my email account settings for example), I decided I wanted a full copy of it. And tried moving it to the hard drive, before deleting it from the computer's hard drive.

The external drive is 500Gb, however had last been used to back up a Mac. And while windows could see exactly what it was, it would not show up in Windows Explorer.

I plugged the drive into the Mac and all of the Apple Time Machine backups were there. But, I no longer needed them since I got a 2Tb WD My Passport and started afresh with a complete new backup on it.

I used the Mac Disk Utility to examine the old 500Gb drive, and decided to use the Mac utility to reformat it to FAT32. The drive on the Vista machine is NTFS. I thought that the Mac still might be able to use empty space on it if it was formatted to FAT32. Macs can not read NTFS drives with programs like, "Finder". Or any other Mac OSX program for that matter.

I suspected there might be some problems. But, I thought it would be worth a try.  I started the 221GB file copy (both old windows and new, although I only selected old) and left the house for a few hours. When I returned the copy function had stopped with the 0x80070052 error. And I decided to skip whatever it was that hung up.

I did the copy from an administrative login. But, I know that Microsoft, in its wisdom, does not give full permission to the administrative user created by typical shleps like us who buy their operating systems time after time from them.

So, my quandary is this: Is this copy any good? If it's not is there a way to fix it? How will I know which files did not copy either because of the permission issue or the mismatch between NTFS and FAT32.

Or, is there anything in the copy I really need anyway (besides email accounts and mailboxes). I can re-download all of the programs I own. I have copies of all of my documents and photos on a third backup drive. I think that many of the files in the programs directory may have had permission or ownership problems anyway. And you just cannot copy most Windows programs.

Is the Windows Vista Home Premium Backup program reliable enough to use? (Windows XP did NOT have a reliable backup program)

The copy function is still trying to complete through a USB 2.0 connection with indicated speed between 2 and 6 Mb per second. I don't think the copy will be any good. But I will let it run overnight anyway.