big sur reading file names wrong on external hard drive

If you used Migration Assistant to populate your computer during the installation of Big Sur, it makes a new user account. You can then have permissions problems when looking at data on the old system or disks copied from it.

Click on “Advanced” in the contextual menu for your account in Preferences>Users . Each User Account is numbered sequentially 501, 502, 503 etc so they can’t read each other’s data.

just had a software update last night and was hoping for a fix. I thought I had a virus or something and I've deleted files that I thought were one thing, but turns out they were not the file the name said. Getting the number sequence and unable to search for the actual file I'm looking for. I notice the files are messed up on my external backup drive as well. I've searched YouTube for a fix but nothing is really addressing this issue yet.

I just had an online chat with a support person about this, she said this is the first time she's heard about so she didn't expect there to be a fix from Apple for this. She said it was a software incompatibility issue. She didn't have a solution. She said I could try to restore from my back up but she couldn't be sure it would work and that I'd lose current files. So I hope other people will report it to apple, and then maybe we can get a fix for this. It'll take forever to manually sort and rename files. I just used the support tab on the top of this page to do a 'chat' and report the problem.

Im having the same issue, Brand New Macbook Pro M1 with Big Sur and a brand new External SSD (MacOS Journaled)

Im hoping Apple has a solution fox for this soon, I used spotlight on my old Macbook Air for 5 years with no issues :(

I'm also having this problem. I have huge archival datasets in a 10TB harddrive (formatted Mac OSX extended) and the spotlight search function either misses out on a lot of files or brings out files that don't correspond to the name at all. It's incredibly annoying. It also doesn't save 'last opened' dates and takes several minutes for all the files to sort them in order of last opened.

I don't have this issue with my old intel MacBook so I end up using that when I need to access these files for work. This seems to be an issue with my M1 Big Sur MacBook air. The problem persists even after I do the obligatory System Preferences>Spotlight>Privacy remapping of my external drive.

Please fix this, Apple!

Same problem here. Brand new Mini M1 with Big Sur.

Searching my external drive and the names are off on everything. It's showing things like a powerpoint file is actually an image from a few years ago. A b&w clipart file is named as the same powerpoint file. Sizes are off too. One says 700mb while it's actually 5kb.

Not a fan of Big Sur so far. I really wish my old laptop wouldn't have died.. *sigh

I had the same problem, plus when clicking on "Get Info" for the files in a folder, the info was either missing or it belonged to a different file completely (i.e. an audio track that was 15sec would say 30 min and have a different name in the "get info" tab). Opening the files was fine, just all the info was jumbled and nothing would come up in searches.

I followed some of the comment's suggestions to re-index and ended up doing that a few times, including to the folders on my hard drive (instead of just the whole hard drive). I'm not sure if that made the difference or not, but everything is back to normal now. Hope this helps!

EDIT: Also, wait a while after re-indexing, it takes a while for everything to be resolved. That might be common knowledge, but I didn't know that!

I truly appreciate the help people here are trying to give, but you know... this isn't on us at all.

There's no reason we should have to re-anything anything.

I have the same problem and it's because the OS isn't doing this very basic job properly. And yes, of course all the externals are Mac formatted.

Not sure this qualifies as a rant, because I no longer expect better, but thanks and sorry for spending your time.

This is back!

I've escalated with AppleCare and they now want me to bring my drives/machine into genius bar the moment it happens. It happened, next available appointment is in 6 days. I don't have time to leave my drive like this until then. Bought a new drive on my dime. Moved over crucial working files. Happening on that drive too.

Reindexing 4 lyfe!

That would be a waste of time since it has nothing to do with your specific hard drive. I haven't been able to search my external drives since I got my new computer, that had big sir already installed a few weeks ago.

Same problem here.

Searches seem to create “ false” names for files in the results, however the preview window (in the case of images) shows the correct file name.

For instance: (apple-f)(find) .74 returns a bunch of results that do not contain .74, and the preview window shows the correct file name, which again does not have the criteria included in the file name at all.

This of course makes it incredibly difficult to locate correct files and is super irritating.

Same here, it's getting very frustrating. I see a bunch of blank white pages with file size of 0... or they won't show the image preview until I click it, and when you do, it's something totally different. Just plugged into co-workers MacBook Pro running High Sierra still, worked perfectly fine as it should so it's got to be an issue with BigSur

Hey guys, problem has gone away for me after deleting the index for that particular (problematic) drive on spotlight preferences. The key and maybe reason also for the problem is letting the ios do the complete index of the drive. If you disconnect drive or presses gets interrupted then the problem starts again. Not sure what I propose is technically accurate but search is back to normal for me.

Just chiming in. I am also having this problem. I got a new SSD for this iMac and installed it, the old HDD was dying. I used Migration Assistant to bring everything over. There's been problem after problem with Big Sur, but now I've just discovered that I, too, when searching for a word document with a specific name, will see a file in the search results with that name, but when I go to preview the file, it is a different file completely, perhaps a photograph from 8 years ago. I'll try what some of you suggest.

All right, I need to vent, so I apologize in advance, but:

I hate to say this, but Apple REALLY dropped the ball here.

These are basic searches that worked up until Big Sur and now we're all screwed.

As professionals, we simply don't have the time to deal with this crap.

FIX. IT.

[Edited by Moderator]