Files became aliases after dragging to external drive on Mac

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pforkes1960 Author

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Files became aliases after dragging to external drive on Mac

I have an external 4 TB drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled).

I needed to clear some space on my main 1 TB APFS-formatted drive, so I dragged several gigabytes of files from my mail APFS-formatted drive to my external Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) drive.

So, I deleted some files from my external (destination) drive and dragged the files again.

The files I dragged to the external drives are the same size as before, but are now alias files! Clicking on them pops up a window saying:

“The alias”xxxxx” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found.”

Looking at my external drive, I have over a hundred such files!!!! Some of the files are EXTREMELY important to me.

I am guessing there is some bit now set in the file’s header, making it an alias.

How can I get my files back?

Mac mini, macOS 15.7

Posted on Aug 2, 2026 3:24 PM

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Answer 1

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PreCognition

Level 4

2,776 points

Aug 2, 2026 3:39 PM in response to pforkes1960

An alias doesn’t contain the original file data, so there isn’t a header bit you can clear to turn it back into the file.

Don’t delete or copy anything else to either drive for now. Select one of the affected items and choose File > Get Info. Check Kind, the exact file size, and the location shown for the original. You can also select the alias and press Command-R to try to reveal its original.

Holding Option-Command while dragging creates aliases, so it’s possible those keys were active during the second drag. Check the original drive, the Trash, and any Time Machine backup for the actual files.

If the originals were deleted and aren’t in a backup, the aliases themselves can’t restore them. Since the files are important, stop using the original drive and consider professional data recovery before trying anything destructive.

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