files dissapeared on external hard drive, still taking up space though

[jtsdesign]

Hi,

We have a LaCie External Hard Drive and alot of files seem to have dissapeared. when we do a find on the files in the finder, they appear as squares with a dashed line. Upon clicking on the file an error message appears stating " The alias "FILE NAME" could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found". I cannot fix the alias as the file can't be located. Looking at the space available on the drive the files must still be on there. I tried first aid repairing but it said its fine. I also have the same problem on my external at home so I'm hoping its a common problem easily fixed.

Any help would me much appreciated.
Thanks Alot
Kev

 

[yellow]

How are the drives formatted?

 

[jtsdesign]

I don't know just plugged them in and used them, never formatted them.

 

[Consultant]

This usually happens when external drive is shut down improperly

- Not ejecting before power off (human error or loss of power)
- Not allowing time to spin down after ejecting before turning off

If it's not a hardware issue, DiskWarrior might be able to recover the files.

 

[jtsdesign]

Thanks for that, at least I know how it has happened for the future now. Does anyone know of a way to fix this without disk warrior, or at least a way to delete everything of the drive as the files are taking up about 80gb. Would erase in First Aid work... I cant try it yet until I backup the OK files on the drive.

Thanks

 

[jtsdesign]

Just found disk warrior at work

Tried it on the drive - it found no errors.
But it does say:
"disk warrior has succesfully built a new directory for the disk named "external" The new directory cannot replace the original directory due to a Mac OS service failure"

 

[Consultant]

Maybe you should try:

Repair permission
Reboot

Make sure the disk warrior is compatible with your version of OS, otherwise move the external drive to a computer with the compatible OS.

 

[jtsdesign]

How do you repair permissions?

Thanks

 

[greekpaz22]

How do you repair permissions?

Click Macintosh HD then Applications then Utilities then Disk Utility then select the drive you want to repair permissions on and select repair permissions at the bottom of the screen. That should help you out..

 

[jtsdesign]

The repair permissions button is faded out so I cant click on it

 

[yellow]

Permissions repair applies only to a boot drive, therefore, it won't help in this case.

You can definitely erase the drive and start over and it will be fine, of course you will loose everything you cannot back up.

You can try using Data Rescue II (or some such app) to attempt to recover files, but it's a pricey app to take a chance on.