I have "Install macOS Sierra" downloaded in my App folder. I moved it off of my SSD to another drive. It said it was moving it, but it did not. Now I have two copies of it on two different drives. If I delete EITHER one of them, it deletes them both. Any tips on getting this to behave as expected. One copy on the 2nd drive and zero copies in my App folder.
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
Do not use Drag and Drop. Instead select the one you wish to copy, press COMMAND-C to copy to the Clipboard. Move to the folder where you want the copy, click in that folder, press COMMAND-V to paste from the Clipboard. That should do it.
Is the copy on the external an alias? If you move the copy on the internal out of the Applications folder, can you then move it to the Trash it without deleting both? Can you disconnect the external and delete the copy on the internal without deleting it on the external?
So I tried it this way. Doing so creates a copy in the other folder as expected, but also creates a second copy of it in the Apps folder. This "second set" behaves just like the first. When I delete the newly created 2nd copy in the Apps folder it also deletes the copy it made in the other folder. Any time I make a copy to a different location, it also creates another copy of it in the Apps folder. This is not the expectation of a normal file move or copy operation. Apparently Apple has done something to this file that is causing this behavior. They appear to be complete copies, as their size is the same at almost 5 GB, and each copy or move operation takes about 5 minutes to complete, so I don't think any aliasing is going on. It does seem that some kind of file linking magic crap is occuring though.
I have not disconnected any drives so far.
However, I am now copying the copy, to a completely different folder, and while this is occuring, it is also creating a second copy back in the Apps folder. *** kind of insanity is this? Well it just finished, and as expected so far, when I deleted one of the set it deleted them both.
Well guys, all is well now, as this was a self-inflicted problem. I can't believe I fell for this, but it happened.
Here is how.
1. I typed "Sierra" into Spotlight and clicked "Open in Finder".
2. I opened another Finder window to create a new folder and moved the file to it.
3. Guess what, the Finder window that Spotlight opens up is updated in real time, so every copy I made was popping up there under "Applications", regardless of the real file location.
4. You can see how this became a circular problem once I started deleting copies and they appeared to be deleting two at a time, even though that isn't what was actually happening.
5. When I was looking at the file info I should have paid more attention to the file location path, but I was focusing on the file size instead to rule out a file alias.
6. Basically, Finder was behaving like it was supposed to, I just wasn't expecting the result and focused in the wrong direction. My bad...Thanks for helping, it's always appreciated.
You are welcome. Good troubleshooting.
Install macOS Sierra file copy issue.
