Can someone explain Cut/Paste/Copy/Moving files in OSX to me?

rp2000 · 14 Feb 2007 at 19:23

Hi,

I have a intel macmini I got recently (mainly for FrontRow). I often find myslef moving files between my NAS and the macmini's Movies folder.

Dragging and dropping between the 2 in seperate finder windows just copies the file. You can't hold down and drag with right mouse key as in windows explorer and then select context "Move here".

Then I tried Cut Paste. As soon as I Cut it goes to Trash. The paste option is not lit.

Seems different to Windows, whereas I thought this kind of thing would be the same.

Also the Finder interface annoys me, if I drag a file into a nother window with folders, if I hover over the folder name too long it opens in an additional window. One more window to close down.

Is there some sort of plugin/extension or something that can give me a more "Windows" way of moving files around?

Mainly I just copy files from my windows laptop to my macmini over *** network and then when I want to move the files aroun in the mac or to the NAS via OSX it just seems to take ages!

Ideally I want to just use the mouse as I seldom dig out the wireless keyboard for the macmini. I have Remote Buddy that lets me do most things via the Front Row remote (Open apps, reboot, browse files etc).

help!!

rp2000

k++ · 14 Feb 2007 at 19:39

Hovering over the folder with a file/folder opens the folder and is an excellent feature of finder. Press space to open that folder immediately. Once you drop the file into this folder or move outside the new finder window it should close automatically.

When moving files between finder windows/desktop etc I press alt to copy the file instead. Moving the file is the default action.
When copying to/from networked devices I believe the default action is copy, I have no idea how to help you in that case. I'll let you know if I find anything.

Personally I find copying over the network painfully slow, it's ridiculous and certainly doesn't reflect the speed of my airport and net-gear router. I am assuming the protocols for Samba file transfer are just not efficient enough to transfer the data quickly enough.

Karl

Will_3rd · 14 Feb 2007 at 19:41

to move files between volumes hold down the "command" button while dragging the file.

rp2000 · 15 Feb 2007 at 10:10

Will_3rd said:
to move files between volumes hold down the "command" button while dragging the file.

Thanks, I will try this.
Edit: Will have to check with the MS mac keyb drivers to see whcih key is allocated to command. I think ALT is normally the "Apple" key and "Windows" key is Command.

k++ said:
Personally I find copying over the network painfully slow, it's ridiculous and certainly doesn't reflect the speed of my airport and net-gear router. I am assuming the protocols for Samba file transfer are just not efficient enough to transfer the data quickly enough.

With wireless it is hard to gauge the maximum speed and whether the bottleneck is sometimes.

I have 2 windows machines, a NAS and a macmini on the LAN (wired). Copying from Windows Laptop to Windows server goes at about 8.5MB a sec, and doing the same from Mac gives about 8.2MB a sec. Both are acceptable for 100MB network (theoretical limit is 12.5 MB but you will rarely see sustained transfer over 10MB a sec in reality). I think the slow speed of transfers from windows to mac could be elsewhere in your setup. Certainly network tests I have run imply there is a negligible difference, which I would have to put down to the SAMBA sharing thing.

rp2000