Unreliable Aliases

That was just an example: perhaps I set up an alias to a Appleworks database file on another Mac (we use lots of these). I put the alias in my Documents folder on my Mac. It's OK for a while then, one day, I double click on the alias and it takes me somewhere totally different, or says "cannot find this alias" or words to that effect - I can't remember the exact Finder message.

But this happens even if the alias points at somewhere on my Mac. Say I create an alias of a folder which is on a firewire drive connected to my Mac, put that alias in my Documents folder (which I keep open for most of the time - it's the way I work). It's OK for a while then, one day, I double click the alias of the folder and another un-related folder opens. If I try to fix the alias in the 'Get Info' dialogue it doesn't work. The only thing I can do is trash the first alias and create a new one - which is fine . . . for a while.

Or maybe I create an alias of an application and put that in my Documents folder. It's fine for a while then, one day, I double click the alias and some un-related folder opens - not an Application, a folder.

The one that prompted me to make this post is: I have a folder on an always connected firewire drive which I call "scrap when printed", that's the folder, not the drive. I use this folder to temporarilly hold files that I will trash when I am happy that the job concerned is completed. Sort of a 'trash it next week' drop-box folder. I created an alias and put it into my Documents folder. As I go along with my daily workflow I may toss files into this alias believing that they are ending up in my "scrap when printed" folder on my Firewire drive. Once a week or so I go and trash the files that I no-longer need. Today I double clicked on the alias to do a bit of clearing out and, instead of opening the "scrap when printed" folder it opened the Documentation folder where Tiger puts my user guides etc. for OSX. In there, with the user guides were a few days worth of my trash next week files, so the alias had been wrong for a few days.

Hope I'm explaining myself a little better.

Thanks for explaining things. I am probably mistaken about item 3, I just had it in my head that all aliases are unreliable and thought I had seen the application alias fail in the past, but again, I am probably mistaken.

So evidently it's a reasonable 'problem' to have, aliases failing on sleeping hard drives and networked Macs. It's not that I have something wrong with my system and it will all come crashing down one day in the future because I hav a corrupt file structure or something - a latent fear.

The last post is getting all too technical for me so I'm out of here.

Thank you very much for the explaination.

Bob.