files AWOL in finder
OSX Lion 10.7.3, 6b ram, 1TB internal drive, 2.8ghz IC Duo, 40gb, 400gb, (firewire) 500gb and 1TB (USB) extermal drives.
Veteran Mac user, comfortable in terminal
Situation:
large fileset on external drives suddenly disappers from finder.
open terminal, cd into directory, issue 'ls -la'
files scroll by in terminal view
files appear in open finder window
given some uncertain set of circumstances, files disappear in Finder again
The first time this happened, I immediately thought the HD was going bad, so I tried to use Disk Utility to make a dmg backup. DU fails with 'insufficient permissions' even after multiple permission rebuild attempts.
Using SuperDuper, I was able to make a file-level backup. SD is now set to back up the working external drive (40gb) once daily.
However, the disappearing files exhibit the same behavior in the SuperDuper-maintained external as in the primary external HD.
I have not migrated the filset to the internal drive and am reluctant to do so.
One more salient point: when this error first occurred, the 'vanished' fileset actually had a local backup in place, something like this:
EXTHD/FILESET/
EXTHD/FILESETBAK/
when I examined FILESETBAK, the directory appeared empty in Finder but running ls -la returned the file display to the expected state.
the non-hidden filecount in these directories is roughly 14,500 files, each under 1 mb in size.
Any insight is appreciated.