big sur reading file names wrong on external hard drive

I agree. I work for a large marine audio company, everything from photo shoots, video, digital content like manuals, boxing, you name it are on my drive, and searching thru it now to find something that may be older is an absolute nightmare.

best option I found was to add the drive to the spotlight search, give it a day or two and remove it, seems to have worked so far

Has anyone found an answer to this yet, or got Apple to take it seriously? I recently replaced a 2013 Core i5 MacBook Pro with a shiny new M1 version with Big Sur. Since I got it (11.2) it has suffered corrupted search results on an external MacOS Extended SSD. What it is doing is finding the right file names but matching them with previews of files in an entirely different folder. When you open the file it opens the wrong file - but gives it the right name! I hoped that the 11.3 or 11.4 updates might fix it, but no. My workaround is to delete the spotlight index for the drive and reindex, and like other people it works for 3-6 days then scrambles again. I did wonder whether the fact that the disk contains mostly files which originated in the predecessor Mac might be part of the problem. I've tried resetting permissions, and all the other suggested fixes. Conclusion: Apple have screwed up. Again.

It's an issue for sure- very difficult to find the correct files. Feels like the whole structure has been jumbled and joggled.

Any idea where to submit a request for fixing this? Certainly a toil for my part.

So my IT guys said it may have been caused by me working off of my externals, which I thought was all diligent in case my computer crashed or whatever but they told me to move my working files to literally my desktop (which sounded crazy) and to then back up to external(s) and/or cloud and so I got set up with Carbonite for all that. I now work off of my desktop and it all seems to be working now. it is a bit confusing as I have so many many files what is on the desktop, what has been backed up etc but tell you what, I can find my files now. Now I can't gurantee that was what was causing it but that was one of two major things I changed that day. The other was to never use Chrome again, that was slowing my machine down massivley. Dont know if the two could have been connected but to those looking for clues, that is something I also changed before it started working again. I hope that helps.

not sure how or why that would matter. Worth a try though. Only issue is having too much... I have 2 - 5TB drives.... this laptop only holds 500GB lol I've tried uploading to OneDrive, Dropbox, you name it, and half the time it will miss files due to naming and take WAY too long.

I have the issue too. Isn't searching your hard drives one of the most basic functions that a computer is supposed to handle? Easy right? How did they screw this up? Even the most basic of Chromebooks can accomplish this simple task. Unbelievably frustrating. PLEASE FIX THIS!

They have yet to fix the issue still. I keep having to add to spotlight for a few days and remove it so it’ll search, or transfer everything off the drive and back on. Very annoying and upsetting for a very high priced laptop

That's exactly what is happening with me. I search my external drive and it shows lots of wrong/"false" files, without extension. Sometimes it show what I am looking for but when I open the file it's a completely another thing. It's veryyy strange, at least I have seen that a **** lot of people have been through this.

I have checked everything this post has outcome: index, finder/spotlight settings. I used to do this simple search everyday, which is the basics of a computer, but now I must "guess" where files are exactly.

IS THERE ANY ANSWER ALREADY?

Had the same problem, but fixed it with the help of Apple Support. Go to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy. Drag the external hard drive onto the empty box area. Then click the (-) to remove it. Search worked as should right after that.

This issue persists. Re-indexing via spotlight security preferences continues to solve the problem, albeit with a 6-7 hour reindex of larger drives, yet shows up again within a few weeks.

OS updates have not fixed the issue, apple support has not been able to address it, and the genius bar said they could not troubleshoot the issue because they don't manufacture the drive or cable.

I'm also having the same issue. Wrong file retrieval from an External Hard Drive. However, I have two externals. Only one is having this issue. Not only do I have a wrong file return in a search, ...but I have a ridiculous amount of "blank" files. These blank files show up, with a name attached, but no file extension assigned. When I double click, I get a reply advising the file is a shortcut file and shows a redirect popup to find the original file.

It is most definitely not the external drive. (I still have my late 2013 iMac 27". Apple pulled the plug on allowing a Big Sur upgrade, so it is still running Catalina.) Once I plug the hard drive back into the iMac / Catalina OS X, there are no issues with any of the files.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/make-mac-file-names-external-drive-30728.html

Hello. I hope you've resolved your problem. I've had this issue for as long as you have. What happened with me was that not only the file names were wrong, but the extension was wrong. Imagine a dox file to appear as an audio while the actual file was an image! Yes, it was this messed up. I always thought it was my old Mac playing tricks. However, I got a 2020 Mac. The problem persisted. So, I came to your post hoping I'll have a solution. Haven't gone through all the replies but the link above helped. It's just like MAGIC :).

This is so typical of Apple these days. Lots of people, all reporting the same issue (so it is clearly a bug) yet nothing is done for months on end.....

I have this problem too - 13" MacBook Pro M1, Big Sur, external SSDs, one formatted HFS and one APFS. Neither can hold a proper set of spotlight results for more than a week or two. Like everyone else, the symptoms are that one day, for no apparent reason, spotlight finds the correct file name, but confuses it with a file in a different folder, so the preview is wrong and sometimes the file suffix is too. I think spotlight is losing track of which folder is which.

Earlier in this thread there was speculation that it might be a permissions issue. The older of my disks used to be used with a different Mac, so this was plausible. However, the newer disk was only bought last week and has never been plugged into any Mac but this one.

the issue only affects external drives - and I have only seen it on SSDs - results for the internal drive are fine.

Has anyone seen this problem with Monterey? I have been holding off upgrading until the bugs in .0 are ironed out!

Same problem, also after upgrading to Big Sur. Obviously no useful answer from Apple. As always Apple gives any useless irrelevant answer that does not admit that it is simply a bug they introduced. And they won't fix it, because, they never care about their users.

I am following this thread to see if Apple gives an answer, but I don't really expect much, Apple never answers...

Not only am I having the problem, it reoccurs periodically after I fix it with the steps provided in Matti's reply. Yes, resetting the SMC will do the trick, but only temporarily. Within a few days I will again get search results from my external hard drive (formatted Mac OS extended) where the file name and file are mismatched. This only started after I updated to Catalina.

A more permanent fix would be appreciated!