External HDD Crashes Finder. Can't access files.

One last bump, fingers crossed!

1. cd /Volumes/Grady's\ 2TB

2. ls -la .DS_Store

Post back if you can find the file.

Response to command #1:

/usr/bin/cd: line 4: cd: /Volumes/Grady's\: No such file or directory

[Process completed]

Response to command #2:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 gradyleach staff 24580 Sep 11 10:21 .DS_Store

[Process completed]

Is your 2TB disk connected? Please post the output of ls /Volumes/ .

It is connected. I can see the icon on the desktop. Also I can see it in disk utility, and when I run verify disk or repair disk everything comes out fine. It is the act of double-clicking on the desktop icon to open it that invariably causes finder to enter the crash loop.

I tried running the following:

Is /Volumes/

… and apparently nothing is happening. This is all that appears in the window:

Gradys-MacBook-Air:~ gradyleach$

Please post the output of diskutil list.

Also, post the output of

find /V* -type f -name .DS_Store -exec ls -l {} \;

diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 120.5 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk1

1: Windows_NTFS Grady's 2TB 2.0 TB disk1s1

[Process completed]

find /V* -type f -name .DS_Store -exec ls -l {} \;

-find: -exec: no terminating ";" or "+"

[Process completed]

***The reponse to "diskutil list" is bizarre, because the last line refers to my external hard drive as "Windows_NTFS Grady's 2TB", when I know for a fact that it was formatted to ExFat not NTFS, and even now when I go into disk utility to look at it, disk utility see it as ExFat.

Any ideas? Thank you so much for the assistance this far!

1. If the 2TB disk is external, and is disconnected, does your Finder work correctly?

2. The "\;" should have allowed the "-exec" to work. Can you post a screen shot of the typed in command? If you triple-click on the find command and use Command-C and Command-V, it should copy it exactly as shown. Command-V in the Terminal Windows should show it correctly as well.

Linc and others here,

There is a safer way to remove the .DSstore files. Using utility tools such as MainMenu or Onyx, one can perform this kind of maintenance (and trigger additional useful maintenance such as forcing cron maintenance jobs to trigger, clearing all browser and user cache, repairing permissions, triggering a fresh rebuild of Spotlight and more. All without the worry of a typo in the terminal wreaking havoc via Unix.

I greatly admire the depth of your instructions, but to the uninitiated, there are potentially safer methods.

I have the same problem as Mik. I tried the DS_Store deleting command but it says "permission denied"...

Disk utility won't "repair" and it says that there are 0 files on my HHD but it also say that there is still 202,81Go on the drive...

You can use 'sudo find...' instead of 'find...' and test. The '...' implies the rest of the command after 'find' as indicated.