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LaCie external hard drive files disappearing

post #1 of 3
9/6/12 at 5:59pm
Thread Starter 

Thank you in advance for any suggestions you may have.

 

System: I have a brand new 3TB LaCie D2 Quadra drive that I am connecting via FW 800 to my iMac27 inch (2009) and my MacBook Pro.  The iMac is running on OSX Lion 10.7.4 and the MacBook Pro is running on OSX 10.6.7.

 

Problem: This morning I backed up about 120G of media files from another drive to LaCie.  I saw them transferred onto the LaCie and they were part of a folder named "2012 media files"  Then, without warning, the entire folder disappeared and I haven't been able to find it since.  The LaCie shows that only 1.37 TB is available which would suggest that the files are still on the drive.  But where?  

 

I've read elsewhere on the forum that there can be problems with the catalog and that these can sometimes be repaired with some sort of disk utility.  Can anyone advise what next steps I should take to trouble shoot and whether I need outside help at this point.  I am fairly new to resolving these kinds of problems.  Oddly, though, this is the second drive IN A WEEK to fail (the other one was a G-Tech Mini 1 TB).  So, I'm wondering if my iMac may have some virus causing the problem???

 

Any help appreciated.

 

Gale

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post #2 of 3
9/7/12 at 3:16am
If you open up a a terminal from /Applications/Utilities/terminal.app and type in:

ls -a /Volumes/Lacie

Replace the word Lacie with the name of the drive (hit tab to autocomplete) and hit return, is the folder listed? This assumes the missing folder is at the root of the drive. If it's not, instead drag the parent folder into the terminal window instead of typing /Volumes/Lacie.

If it shows up, it is just being set with the wrong visibility flags and this can be changed using

chflags nohidden /Volumes/Lacie/missingfolder

If it doesn't show up, you can repair your drive with Disk Utiity in /Applications/Utilities/ and choose the first aid tab.

If it repairs the drive but the behaviour still occurs, your internal drive might have a fault too but this has to be repaired in single user mode using the following method:

boot into single user mode holding command-s
when the scroling text stops, type:
mount -uw /

and hit return, then:
fsck -fy

when it's done, check if it fixed any issues, type reboot and return
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post #3 of 3
9/21/12 at 3:56pm
Thread Starter 

Marvin -

Thank you so much for your reply.  Unfortunately, I didn't see it until just now.  You give a lot of useful troubleshooting info that I will use the next time something like this happens.  In this case, I was able to find the missing files in my Trash.  Don't know how they got there, but glad to have them back.

Best,

Gale

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