Files disappeared after copying from iMac to USB drive

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Level 1

26 points

Files disappeared after copying from iMac to USB drive

I had 3 folders of files copying over to a USB hard drive connected to my iMac under MacOS Sierra 10.12.6. Somewhere near 7 GB worth of data copied over to the hard drive successfully but the folders of files have disappeared from the original location on my Mac.

I've searched in Spotlight and got no results except for the spot I copied them to. I viewed invisible files for the original folder and found nothing there. I checked the Trash but don't see them listed there either. As the Trash is full of other files I recently deleted I know I didn't empty it and somehow forgot about it. I also viewed the invisible files in the Trash without any luck. Unfortunately, I don't know my iMac's drive capacity before the copying took place to see if 7 GB was recovered after the files disappeared.

I've restarted and re-checked all of the folder locations but still haven't found the files on my original drive.

How do files simply go missing from the original drive after copying to another?

At the time I was copying them, I did switch to another Space, and also had a Time Machine backup in progress to another USB drive (which seems perpetually stuck in 'Preparing Backup", even after restarting). I only mention these things in case it helps to find a solution. Oh, the original location was also a folder I exclude from Time Machine backups so the files won't exist on any backups except for the manual copying I did to the non-TM drive.

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12.6), 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, 24 GB RAM

Posted on Oct 11, 2018 10:01 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,554 points

Oct 12, 2018 7:36 PM in response to dugost

How did you transfer the files over, was it a simple drag and drop which should just make a copy of the files on the destination disk but preserve the original files and folder in the original location. Is it possible you had held down the Command key down whilst dragging and dropping the folder, if so that is called 'moving' the files/ folder, so moves them to the chosen destination but crucially deletes them from the source location.

Did the files successfully copy to the destination disk, if so you can just copy them back.

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Oct 12, 2018 7:36 PM in response to dugost

If you want to search the internal drive again, see if you can find the file(s) using one of these programs. If you go Finder/View/Show Path Bar, it will show you where it is located.

EasyFind – Spotlight Replacement

Find Any File

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Answer 3

dugost Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 12, 2018 6:45 AM in response to Eau Rouge

I suppose it's possible but very unlikely that I'd have held down Command when doing my drag and drop.

They did successfully copy over but I don't need to copy them back, they can live on that drive now. I was only posting because I was curious to know the reasons why this could have happened. If there was another reason beyond operator error for it then I might need to be cautious when transferring more critical files.

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Answer 4

dugost Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 12, 2018 8:33 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks. I gave Find Any File a shot and got mixed results. To recap, I copied 3 folders of files, all of which disappeared from the internal drive after copying to the external. I checked the Trash and found no folders or nested files from those folders in there afterwards.

While FAF didn't find anything related to 2 of the folders, it did find a nested file from the third folder but no others or its enclosing folder. FAF listed the path as:

hard disk > Users > user > .Trash > filename

I right-clicked to 'Reveal In Finder' and it then appeared in the Trash's list of files. As I said, it was not in there last time I checked so I'm assuming the 'Reveal In Finder' option made it visible.

When I view the invisible files listed in my user directory, there are lots of .files but no .Trash. There's a .Trashes in my hard disk's top-level directory but nothing is in there, visible or invisible.

So how does something end up in .Trash? Is it likely everything else that disappeared ended up there and has simply been purged by the system in the meantime, with .Trash acting as some sort of temporary cache?

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Files disappeared after copying from iMac to USB drive

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