Q: How should I repair Finder?

WZZZ,

The only finder.plist I'm able to see in the Preferences folder is com.apple.finder.plist. Is that the one you mean?

Incidentally, during my tests when the Internet was completely inaccessible, I performed some boots into Safe Mode. Doubtless, the first time I did it Mavericks performed some clearing up of files. However, at that time I hadn't noticed that Finder was showing incorrect drive sizes and dates. I didn't notice that until some days later. I also hadn't noticed that I'd not re-chosen the appropriate external drive to be the TM backup drive, as doing a restart or a safe mode boot takes away the selected-for-backup status. Fortunately, that doesn't matter, and I've reselected the drive since.

If the above-mentioned file is the correct one to move to the Trash, I'll give it a try later on and I'll then let you know if it makes any difference.

Eric,

What's Google Drive?

I do use Google in respect of its search engine but I've not got anything called Google Drive on my iMac. At least, I'm not aware of anything called Google Drive being on it. I've not myself installed anything of that name.

Sorry I've not been in touch for a couple of days. Been busy, I'm afraid, with several other, non-computing tasks. I've been nevertheless trying further things with this Finder issue in odd moments.

First, I'm sure I don't have Google Drive installed. Although I've an infrequently-used GMail account I've had a careful look at it and though GD is mentioned, it's not an app I've opted to have and the space used for it is zero. In any event, my particular Finder issue isn't one where Finder is unstable; it's essentially that, in certain places in the main Finder window, a couple of listed disk capacities are completely wrong.

One of the USB-connected external disks is the TM backup disk and Finder persistently gives the filesize of the sole backupdb folder as the 425GB I've previously mentioned. Unless I'm missing a trick here, that's impossible, as the entire backup disk is only 256GB. I'm beginning to suspect that this is because Finder has been buggy from the very first day I bought this iMac. That was about 2 years ago and it was a brand new machine, with Mavericks installed. At that time, after configuring the Mac to my preferences, I recall remarking to a Mac friend that I could never get Finder to display any filesizes (apart from those of the disks/partitions in the main Finder window). It was passed off as some quirk of perhaps Spotlight, but now on reflection perhaps recent changes I've made have modified this and its inability to calculate said sizes emphasised? Perhaps Finder and/or Spotlight on Mavericks is just buggy and therefore bad at calculating filesizes? I have of course set up Show View Options for all the sets of folders/files, specifically using 'calculate actual sizes'. But these days File Size generally works, except not properly with regard to the used sizes of a couple of the disks. The sizes and other attributes of all my various personal files on the various disks are all fine and if I use Get Info on these, or actually on the two disks in question, the results are again fine. You with me?

The other broken aspect of Finder - and again I think it's always been like this, though a little worse of late - is that no matter what I do by way of selecting column headers (on the RHS), all the selected ones end up pushed to the far right in the window, compressed together. So subsequently, every time I open a folder of files I have to pick apart the columns and drag them over toward the filenames column. So this points again to Finder having a bug in that regard.

Obviously, I tried deleting and regenerating the Finder plist, but to no avail. I'll have to now explore some of the other suggestions. I'm trying not to do anything that'd lose me the two big third-party apps I use, a couple of popular ones from Microsoft and Serif. I don't use any browser extensions or any other apps, and the only plug-in I use is Flash.

At one point I summised that the small used capacity I was seeing in the exFAT disk (partition) that was supposed to be empty was due to perhaps Mavericks (HFS+ journaled) either failing to read that disk, or perhaps Mavericks seeing instead the data quantity of the partition table. At one point I used Disk Utility to delete (re-format) that partition. It made no difference, but I then noticed that the used amount of the partition slowly crept up from 1 or 2MB to around 9MB, changing each time I re-opened Finder to look at it. Weird, eh?

Unfortuntely, it's impossible to make any comparisons with the used capacities from way back by running TM, because TM only ever backs up the Mavericks HD (partition) - at least on my machine, so I can't look back in time and inspect the capacities of the other disks/partitions.

I'm inclined to leave things as they are. These two instances of strangely-reported sizes, together with the columns business, aren't interfering with my manipulation of personal files or of running my two apps. Maybe you can suggest another Finder system file (not in Preferences but elsewhere) that I could try deleting? Would Spotlight have anything to do with this? But perhaps, for Finder to be truly cured on my machine, I'll need to wait until I upgrade Mavericks to El Capitan or Sierra, as I guess it'll be then that Mavericks will get completely deleted from my machine and therefore a clean new set of Finder system files installed.

Today I tried something different, hoping that Finder would then detect the correct sizes of the backup disk and the one other external disk partition that's currently unused. The backup disk runs straight off the iMac's main built-in USB hub, whereas the other disk (partition) is part of another external disk but which sits on an external, powered USB hub.

I demounted both of them, then powered down both the iMac and the external hub. The idea was to get Mavericks to re-detect the two disks and hopefully correct the used sizes. But when I powered up the iMac and the external hub again, the backup disk was now completely missing!

I tried all manner of things but neither Finder nor Disk Utility could find the backup disk. The other one was detected and listed, but no backup disk. Looking in the TM applet in System Preferences, TM still thought that the backup disk was selected, but on the other hand TM didn't now show that disk as being one of the set. At that point I had visions of perhaps having to erase (re-format) the backup disk and re-form a backup disk from scratch. But then, how could that be done, because Disk Utility couldn't even find the disk!

In the end, I retrieved the situation by removing the backup disk from the iMac main hub and plugging it instead into a port on the external hub. Mavericks (Finder) then displayed the backup drive on the screen and automatically asked if I wanted it to be the backup drive. Phew! I agreed and then re-did the demounting/powering down, so that I could put the backup disk back on to the iMac's main USB hub. Thereafter, it was detected and properly listed.

Furthermore, it now shows the correct used amount (41.2GB) in Finder's main window. However, using Finder to look at its contents - the folder Backups.backupdb - Finder stubbornly maintains that the used size is 456.65GB  - which, as I've said before, it can't possibly be. As for the used size on that other disk (left on the external hub), that's still saying 9.2MB used.

I can only conclude from this that, in the absence of any other explanations for these screwy sizes, Finder in Mavericks has some serious issues in both the detecting of the disks and of their used sizes. Perhaps the 9.2MB that Finder reports for the used size of what is actually an unused disk partition is in reality some normally-hidden data concerning the partition table? But then why show that in the main Finder window? That 9.2MB consists of 72 files, apparently. Maybe the 9.2MB is a quirk that results from Mavericks being formatted to OSX Journaled Ext but with me having specifically formatted that partition to exFAT? Perhaps the truly-used capacities of the other partitions on that same physical disk means that their individual small bits of partitioning data simply get lost in the bigger used numbers?

To me, the reported used size of the Backups.backupdb folder remains an utter mystery. There, both Mavericks and the backup disk are formatted to a common OSX Journaled Ext, so it must be just Finder itself that's wrongly interpreting the used size of the disk. As I've said before, if I look in Disk Utility or I do a Get Info on the backup drive, I always then get a sensible figure for the used capacity. Go figure.