Files Missing, No Errors in Disk Utility

I had an odd thing happen today, I logged into my mac and Handbrake was missing from the Applications folder leaving a "?" on the dock. Also nearly half of video files i had ripped from my personal DVD collection were gone as well.

Did a verify and repair disk in disk utility and found no errors. This is a 2013 MacBook Air with 256GB SSD.

I'm not sure what to think of this really, Maybe my SSD is nearing the end of it's life? I doubt it, but maybe. Or perhaps it could have something to do with FileVault not being finished encrypting the video files and the computer was hard rebooted?

Honestly, i don't really know what happened and i doubt theres an easy way to figure it out. I was just wondering if anyone has had something similar happen?

dyt1983 said:

Assuming you haven't reinstalled any apps, you can check the modify date on the Applications folder to see when Handbrake probably went missing. I bet you'll find that the time probably corresponds to when you were logged in using the computer (if it's the time of a reboot, you'd see that as well).

Unless you have other evidence, I'd bet it is a user-caused issue. We've probably all caused changes on our computers with errant keystrokes or mouse drags: renaming files, moving files, and so on.

Click to expand...

Normally i would agree with you, but considering that there is also about 20GB of videos missing i don't think that user error is the case.

I store the videos in a fairly complex folder tree.

(Videos) -> (HD) or (SD) -> (Movies) or (Series) -> (Season) -> (Disc #)

It would be different if entire folders were missing, but in this case i am only missing 1 or 2 episodes of a season or only a couple of the special features.

They all report accurate dates, of about a week ago which was the last time i did any work on the videos folder.

The applications folder shows not being modified since earlier this month which also sounds about right.

It's not like i've lost crucial data or anything, i can get it all back. It's just strange, ill probably end up doing a clean Yosemite install after i get what i have backed up.

I mean, normally when something like this happens there are left over journals on the filesystem that point to these files which don't exist anymore. This usually makes OS X trigger a file system check on boot, which it didn't. Disk Utility also checks these journals and reported no errors. This all points to the data being legitimately deleted, but the dates on the folders say otherwise. The files haven't been hidden, i checked. And it wasn't moved to .Trashes

So a clean install sounds like a good idea to me. I don't really have time to go log searching for this.