I don't know whether this is the problem in this case but one thing that has caught me out several times in the past is that File::Find uses unix specific features to speed up enumeration of directories under unix-like OSes.

If you try a basic File::Find like the above on a DOS/VFAT/ISO9660 (CDROM) partition then it will fail in pretty much the way you describe IIRC.

To fix it, put this in...

use File::Find;
$File::Find::dont_use_nlink=1;  # for CDROMS, DOS etc
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