Size of Alias?

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Level 2

183 points

Size of Alias?

I moved large folder to external hard drive and then created an Alias which I put on Desktop of MacBook Air 2022. When I do cmd-I the size of the alias is given as the same size of the folder I thought I had moved off the computer?

So have I really moved the folder off the MBAir?

Posted on Feb 16, 2023 9:02 AM

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Answer 1

pwwwayne Author

Level 2

183 points

Feb 16, 2023 10:44 AM in response to Tesserax

It seems what I did was simply/stupidly added the word Alias to the name of the original file rather than actually creating an alias.

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

158,658 points

Feb 16, 2023 10:16 AM in response to pwwwayne

Not sure what went wrong, but the following is typically how I create one.

I open a Finder window to the location of the external drive and select the folder I want to make an alias for.
Right-click on the folder, and then, select Make Alias. This should create a new alias folder on the external drive. At this point, you can double-check the alias folder's size with <command><I>.
Drag this alias folder to your Mac's desktop or wherever you want it placed.
Optionally, you can edit the folder's name to remove word "alias."

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

158,658 points

Feb 16, 2023 9:15 AM in response to pwwwayne

Hmm, I just tried this with an alias folder on my Mac's desktop that is pointing to the same folder on an external drive ... and it is NOT the same size as that latter folder. It is significantly smaller. In my case: 1 KB vs. 230 GBs.

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Answer 4

pwwwayne Author

Level 2

183 points

Feb 16, 2023 9:36 AM in response to Tesserax

That is exactly what I want done!

How am I failing to do this?

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Size of Alias?

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