Missing files off desktop, aliases in their place?

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Level 1

10 points

Missing files off desktop, aliases in their place?

I'm hoping I'm not the only one that's run into this problem. I have a fair amount of documents on the desktop of my work mac, and suddenly (last thursday night-ish) a few key folders dissapeared. Aliases named the same as the now missing folders have appeared in their place and these aliases point to the folders that have now dissapeared. I can't seem to locate the originals anywhere!

I don't connect to fileservers, use secondary hard drives, or mount any other volumes but my own internal HD.

Someone maliciously deleting these folders, then creating aliases to them would seem like quite stretch, so I'm hoping OS 10 is just temporarily hiding them from me. Any ideas as to where my files could have gone?

Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Dec 11, 2006 10:12 AM

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Answer 1

scapesuiter

Level 7

27,670 points

Dec 11, 2006 8:16 PM in response to Blake Pierce

Hello. Click on the alias icon to select it. Then Get Info from the File menu. It should tell you where the original file is located. If not, someone is fooling with the files.

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Answer 2

Blake Pierce Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 13, 2006 3:18 PM in response to Blake Pierce

The aliases point to the original folders (now missing) on the desktop.

On that machine, there was a folder full of data called "Old Projects" sitting on the desktop. Now, there is an alias called "Old Projects", with a path of /Users/Mark/Desktop/Old Projects, but the "Old Projects" folder is nowhere to be found.

In essence, where there was a folder full of data, there now is an alias (named the same as the original folder) that points to that previously existent folder.

-Blake

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Answer 3

Dec 14, 2006 12:56 PM in response to Blake Pierce

If you don't connect to servers or have an external drive, how do you backup? If this is a business computer you should be backing up every day.

You could try starting up from your install disk, access Disk Utility from the menu bar, run Repair Disk, and, just for luck, Repair Permissions. Restart normally. If there is directory damage that Disk Utility can't fix, you'll have to use Disk Warrior and hope it can fix it.

Or a co-worker has a nasty sense of humor.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

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Answer 4

Feb 27, 2007 12:17 PM in response to Blake Pierce

Hello folks,
Total newbie here!
Im having the exact same problem.
I have tried to locate using spotlight and find options.
I am told that the alias could not be opened because the file cannot be found.
The files just seem to have vanished.

My little bundle of joy is:
OS X 10.4.2 ibook G4 powerbook6,7 1.42GHz 1GB RAM (13GB free space)

hope im not hacked to bits!!

i book G4 powerbook6,7 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

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