grayed out files

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Hutchtribe Author

Level 1

11 points

grayed out files

I have something in the order of 27,000 grayed out files. Does anyone have advice for how to fix?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 5, 2021 1:29 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

117,274 points

Apr 5, 2021 6:06 PM in response to Hutchtribe

I wasn't sure I could trust the zero KBs - didn't know that "placeholders" was a thing. If that's the case, then the originals should still be at the original location, right? If that's all true, then how do I delete the placeholders?

You probably can't, and they probably don't need to be. Try to copy them again and see what happens. Maybe start with just a few of them.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

210,925 points

Apr 5, 2021 3:48 PM in response to Hutchtribe

Can you delete any of the gray files from the destination drive? I get those when I'm ripping an audiobook and kill the copy process in the middle. Those for me can be deleted. They are what Barney-15E theorized: placeholders.

Try copying a file over to see if it replaces it's placeholder. If it does then recopy the files, but maybe fewer at a time.

Thought: are you copying an entire drive to another drive that was empty to start with? If so erase the destination drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone the source drive to the destination drive. Or you can use either to clone a folder of other folders to the other drive.

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Answer 3

Hutchtribe Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 5, 2021 3:10 PM in response to Hutchtribe

So, I was copying files from one external drive to another. The computer froze in the middle of the process (likely due to other demands on the system). When I rebooted, there were 27000 files showing in the new location but grayed out. They also have a new "date created" of 1969-12-31. I can find various websites that give instructions to change the date on a file, which would likely solve one file at a time. My question is whether there is a strategy that would resolve multiple or many files at the same time.

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Answer 4

Hutchtribe Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 5, 2021 5:55 PM in response to Barney-15E

I wasn't sure I could trust the zero KBs - didn't know that "placeholders" was a thing. If that's the case, then the originals should still be at the original location, right? If that's all true, then how do I delete the placeholders?

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Answer 5

Hutchtribe Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 6, 2021 2:30 AM in response to Barney-15E

I was able to recopy the files. the gray files remain, so finder gave the new copies a new name (added "copy" to each file). I was unable to delete the grayed out placeholders, which is a bit of an annoyance but tolerable since the files are now successfully copied. I will look into the cloner apps mentioned above. Thanks very much for the input.

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