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Rather Shocking OS X Bug Discovered -> Files Vanish

Well, I've always chalked it up to user error for long enough ---- this weekend made me realize that it never has been.

Twice yesterday, and four times today, a file I was working on simply disappeared from my Desktop. Vanished, gone, poof.

I've been working on an RTF file that I periodically export to PDF on the Desktop, and this exported PDF is a file that I need to email off when I make changes to it. The only applications that directly use this file are TextEdit, whatever TextEdit uses to render them to PDF, and Mail.app.

Periodically, the PDF file just ceases to exist. When I go to email it off, the one I am looking for is no longer there. It's gone.

Now, when I say gone, I mean gone. It's not in the trash, it's not findable via the terminal, the shell, or any conventional filesystem tool. I am a Linux Systems Administrator, and I spend 70% of my life in the shell, so if it's there, I'll find it.

To make matters worse, there are no messages in the OS X console which give any hint as to what has happened to the file.

As I mentioned, this has happened to me numerous times since I've upgraded to "Mountain Lion" (I'm currently using 10.8.5).

I've reported mysterious file loss on various forums before, with two different Macs … but, well, the consensus was always user error. You know how that goes in the Mac world sometimes. 50 "that never happens to me, therefore it must be you" replies, and to be fair, I don't completely blame them. I've seen users do some pretty goofy things over the years, so skepticism is not unwarranted. Especially since, in 2013 at least, operating systems don't just delete files randomly.

Except that they do. This weekend, it's happened six times.

So, I'm here to tell you, it's not your imagination my friends. OS X has a pretty gnarly bug that indiscriminately, randomly, and without warning or notice … quietly deletes files. It's happen most recently on my Desktop, but I can't say with any certainty that it doesn't happen in other areas of the filesystem as well.

It may not happen to most of you, or even many of you, but I've paid close attention this weekend, and it does indeed happen.

The question is, why?

I don't spend enough time in the Darwin source code to offer a hypothesis, and I'll concede that a low-level knowledge of HFS is not my specialty.

Any help?

As someone who mucks around all day as 'root' in 15+ different mission-critical servers, I assure you that accidentally deleting files is not something that I do very often.

This happens on two of my Macs, so it's definietely not hardware related, and when I mentioned it to a collegue, he said "Hey, that's happened to me too! I thought I must have deleted it by accident!"

That seems to be a running assumption.

Fortuantnely, I do make copious backups of my laptop, so I'm only losing up to an hour's worth of data when these mystery deletions happen ... but that's still valuable time at my hourly rate.

Thanks, and have a great Columbus Day.

I trust the rest of you will spend it honoring the life of Christopher Columbus, as I will.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 13, 2013 4:43 PM

19 replies

macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Oct 14, 2013 5:43 AM in response to Miss Ann Thrope

Run this diagnostic, prepared especially for Apple Support communities and post your results.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Nov 6, 2013 2:23 PM in response to Miss Ann Thrope

I have just had a similar disappearance of a folder residing on the desktop. Running a fusion drive mini with ML, I had a folder on the desktop which kept files of projects I was currently working on, and without notice or action on my part, the folder and all of it's contents has vanished. The files nor folder can be found anywhere! I have run various disk and file recovery utilities with no success.

If it was as simple as a user error, and I somehow trashed the folder, or moved it to some other location, the files would still exist and could be located with a search. This is not the case.

After searching these forums for hours, this is a real issue. How can we get this in front of Apple...

Ikebbe

Level 1

0 points

May 4, 2014 2:39 PM in response to Miss Ann Thrope

Hello,

I work in the education sector and have been using mac desktops and laptops for two decades now.

During the time, I could not imagine a mac losing files on a sizable scale with such persistence:

I use a MacBook Pro retina with SSD HDD on which OS X 10.9.2 is installed. I purchased it a few months ago and only updated it from 10.9.1.

Three weeks ago, ten out of twelve folders I had in my Documents folder suddenly disappeared (160 GB worth) and I thought it was my mistake. I spent a strenuous week trying to restore losses although I backup almost daily.

Yesterday, I was in the countryside with no internet connection when it happened again: although I did not replicate the exact file structure in Documents but the same two folders (Temp and Personal) survived this deletion and I know I did not cause it because the Trash bin still had some deleted items I had previous to that major deletion which means it skipped the Trash bin.

I asked a more experienced colleague but he had no idea about it but he advised me to delete the Document folder and make a new one as he could not see the problem related to HW nor viruses because it would have been random rather than consistent as my case.

I am past the frustration over lost files no matter how critical they were. I just want to identify the cause of my dilemma. I will move my folders elsewhere and put them under different names (just like a witness protection program) but I would like to nail the real perpetrator.

Any ideas?

Eric Root

Level 10

684,057 points

May 5, 2014 10:42 AM in response to Ikebbe

Try macjack's suggestion.

Rather Shocking OS X Bug Discovered -> Files Vanish