Accidentally downloaded Big Sur to External Hard Drive and now I can't see my files on there

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Level 1

4 points

Accidentally downloaded Big Sur to External Hard Drive and now I can't see my files on there

Big Sur was bugging me about downloading the update so I attempted last night. It said there wasn't enough space on my internal hard drive and simply allowed me to choose one of my external hard drives. So I did and let it do its magic.

Now when I click on the external hard in Finder, I dont see any of my files and photos!!! It looks like a normal hard drive folder list with "User" and "Applications" and "System".

When I pull up the "Manage Storage" tool, I can see that my 2.25TB of data is still in use on the external hard drive but I can't figure out how to access the data.

Is there a way to access so I can copy to a new drive or can I just remove these "system" and "Applications" view?

Posted on Dec 16, 2020 11:26 AM

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Answer 1

sterling r

Community Specialist

Dec 19, 2020 11:52 AM in response to AitchSeeAre

Hello and welcome to Apple Support Communities, AitchSeeAre.

If we understand your post correctly, you downloaded macOS Big Sur to an external drive and you're now unable to access the other files on that drive. We’d like to help.

Make sure that External Disks are still enabled in Finder settings. This article will show you how:

Change Finder preferences on Mac

If you're still unable to access your data follow the steps in this article:

Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

Let us know if that resolves this issue for you.

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

60,284 points

Dec 19, 2020 7:12 PM in response to AitchSeeAre

Big Sur most likely put your files into the "Relocated Items" folder within the "Shared" folder within the "Users" folder on your external drive. See this Apple article for what happens to items located on the root of the drive when you upgrade to Catalina from an older version of macOS:

https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/mac-help/mchl8ae423a3/mac

Edit: I forgot to mention that you may see two volumes on your external drive. One with be the default name and a second one with the default name plus " - Data". While both volumes will contain a "Users" folder only the "Users" folder on the " - Data" volume will contain user data (if you don't see it here, then check the other volume just to be safe).

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Accidentally downloaded Big Sur to External Hard Drive and now I can't see my files on there

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