I just got a Mac-compatible Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive, and only too late did I discover that it compresses all my photos after I transfer them from my Powerbook. I expected them to decompress automatically when I dragged them back onto my computer, but no dice. The thing is, I freed up about 20 gigs of space on my computer's hard drive, and all of that is appearing in the external's info box. I'm assuming all the data from my larger image files is floating around on my external somewhere, but I don't know how to get it back. Also, the music I put on the external didn't get compressed. Is there some sort of decompression software download I can use, like WinZip or something, to decompress my image files? Or is there another solution to figuring out where all my data disappeared to?
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External hard drive compression
- Thread starter kelio13
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If it is compressing your images, it may unfortunately be doing so in a lossy fashion. JPEG images don't compress very much by being zipped. If the space on the external hard drive does not increase by an amount roughly equal to your internal, you are losing data.
However, it sounds like the program is simply hiding your files. What I don't know is how or why. Have you checked the documentation for your backup software?
This is why I never trust another application to do these things for me. I don't trust it to do things behind my back. That, and nobody could possibly design a program as smart as I am.
However, it sounds like the program is simply hiding your files. What I don't know is how or why. Have you checked the documentation for your backup software?
This is why I never trust another application to do these things for me. I don't trust it to do things behind my back. That, and nobody could possibly design a program as smart as I am.