Corrupted photo files on external hard drive

Question

Level 1

4 points

Corrupted photo files on external hard drive

Hi everyone.

Thanks for your help in advance.

I separated my photos from my older (2015) iMac onto a three-year-old Seagate 8 TB hard drive that I bought new. A few months ago I amalgamated all my photo files onto this same Seagate drive, moving them from my newer (2017) MacBook, and even adding photos from my old iPhoto files.

The drive has acted slowly ever since. While accessing some of the files, it operates normally, while accessing others, it acts weirdly: making unending copies of photos (with consecutive file number names), being unable to delete this, except one at a time; the shrunken icon photos seen in the global view sometimes become very small, and I'm unable to delete them (it's sometimes like whack-a-mole); sometimes I get the spinning beach ball of doom until I force-quit Photos...sigh.

Is there a seek-and-destroy app that will find the corrupted files? Malwarebytes doesn't seem to be able to go into an external hard drive and find the offender. I've seen that CleanmyMac gets poor reviews and seems inconsistent and/or not-so-good. Avast Security claims that they will do this - anyone vouch for them? Does Avast have any conflicts or problems with Malwarebytes? Could I have Avast give this a try,

and not screw up my files or my computer?

Thanks again for your time, thoughts and efforts!!

Happy Holidays!

DK

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 15, 2020 12:22 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

TonyCollinet

Level 7

23,867 points

Dec 15, 2020 1:11 PM in response to DKVB

Don't use ANY software that goes into the library and tries to modify the internal structure. That will damage the library and cause photos to malfunction. In fact if you have ever used any such software that might well explain what you are seeing now. That includes "cleaning programs". Malware bytes doesn't look for corrupted files, it looks for malware - but again if you let it delete anything in your library that it thinks is malware, it will damage the library.

In the meantime - is your external drive correctly prepared for photos?

It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled), and not be (or have been) used for time machine. It must have the 'ignore ownership" checkbox ticked. It should not be on a memory stick, SD or similar. It stands to reason that if you want any sort of reasonable performance it should be a fast drive with a fast connection.

See

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517

And if you can answer the following - it might help people suggest other things to check.

What version of MacOS are you on?
Is the external drive directly connected, or connected over a network?
Have you used any apps to remove duplicates, if so, which?
Do you use Icloud to sync photos?
Do you use time machine for backups.

Reply

Corrupted photo files on external hard drive

Similar questions