External hard drive directory issue?

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Level 1

13 points

External hard drive directory issue?

There is an issue in one of my external hard drives (a HGST 4TB) while using with my home iMac. Every time I double-click the icon on the desktop to open the files. The correct appropriate applications open but wrong files from the other hard drive are launched. Or sometimes the files don't launch at all after the application opened.

However, files open correctly if I use the open dialogue within the application and choose the files I want to open. Also while I take the HD to use with the other mac in my office it performs normally.

I doubt if it's the hard drive directory record in my home iMac is buggy. I have already tried to use the disk utility to repair disk permission and rebuild desktop with Oynx.

Any suggestion is welcomed.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), null

Posted on Oct 4, 2018 4:03 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 4, 2018 11:25 PM in response to dustinshum

If you get informations for an item in the Finder (cmd+i) for a file that isn’t correctly opened from the external drive, you get the correct path as "Where" in general panel?

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

685,257 points

Oct 5, 2018 10:19 AM in response to dustinshum

You are welcome. Have you tried deleting the aliases on the Desktop and creating new ones? The current ones may be corrupt.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

685,257 points

Oct 4, 2018 9:41 AM in response to dustinshum

wrong files from the other hard drive are launched.

Clarification questions - is the other hard drive an external or are you referring to the internal hard drive? If another external, if you disconnect it, do the files open correctly?

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Answer 4

dustinshum Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 4, 2018 11:01 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for the response. The files are also from another external drive (let's say drive B) shares the same USB drive dock as the problematic drive (drive A). If I unmount the drive A, no file is opened at all. As I mentioned earlier I can open it in the open dialogue in the app.

I work on the image files and the image processing apps like Photoshop or Photo Mechanic. Sometimes double-click the icon or dragging the icon onto the app icon in the dock doesn't open at all, sometimes the apps tell me that the file type is wrong. So I speculate the file path is incorrect.

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Answer 5

dustinshum Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 4, 2018 11:20 PM in response to Matteo Beretta

Thanks for the response. The drive is in HFS+ format. I did try to check it with the disk utility and found no issue. There was minor directory issue in the past while I did the routine disk utility checking (that's my habit) and fixed. I dunno if that mess the directory but as I said it works normally on my other macs.

No the drive is just regular storage. No home folder or other system stuff in it.

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Answer 6

Oct 4, 2018 9:53 AM in response to dustinshum

Is the volume on external hard drive in Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) format?

When you tried to repair it with disk utility there was errors related to B-tree?

You moved your home folder on this external drive or there was only "regular" folders?

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External hard drive directory issue?

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