External Drive Visible in Mac OS X

[o2byz]

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a hardware issue or a software one. I recently swapped out from a PC to a iMac. I wanted to keep all my old files so I pulled out the internal HDD and placed it in a HDD Enclosure and connected it via USB 2.0. Now the Mac recognized it and all seemed well, but a hidden folder I need access to doesn't show up on my drive. If it helps, this drive was the master drive on my old PC and the file I'm trying to locate was on the desktop.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[angelwatt]

In what way was the folder "hidden?" There's some command line tricks that might help.

ls -lO [B]path to folder[/B]

Those are lowsercase Ls. For the path to folder, a trick you can use is to drag the folder from Finder into the Terminal window and it will paste in the path. You'll be throwing in the Desktop folder from the external drive. Paste the results here in a post.

 

[o2byz]

The folder was a work folder on my desktop set up as hidden so when I left for work I could simply go file options, hide all hidden folders. It was kinda shadowed out if that makes sense. Now I can't reach it.

I have no clue what this "Terminal" thing is.

 

[angelwatt]

I have no clue what this "Terminal" thing is.

It's an app located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, or just open Spotlight and type in Terminal and it should show. It's a command-line program to interact with the Unix underpinnings of the operating system.

 

[o2byz]

Similar to dos or linux. Ok, my next question is then how do I convince terminal to let me move between drives? I looked to see commands but saw nothing that gave me a directory.

I really appreciate all the help

 

[angelwatt]

Similar to dos or linux. Ok, my next question is then how do I convince terminal to let me move between drives? I looked to see commands but saw nothing that gave me a directory.

I really appreciate all the help

As I mentioned earlier, you can drag a folder from Finder into Terminal and it will paste in the path for you. Extra drives are added into the /Volumes/ directory though.

 

[o2byz]

Thanks for the patience, but this all really new to me. So I did what you said and dragged the folder into Terminal. That gave me the path but I'm not sure how to change directories to that path

 

[angelwatt]

Thanks for the patience, but this all really new to me. So I did what you said and dragged the folder into Terminal. That gave me the path but I'm not sure how to change directories to that path

You don't have to change paths, the command I gave before will read in the path that you dragged in. The cd (change directory) is the command for for moving between directories though.

 

[o2byz]

Success! I found the folder. Um, now how do I get access to it or move the folder to my new drive (the mac one)?

 

[angelwatt]

Success! I found the folder. Um, now how do I get access to it or move the folder to my new drive (the mac one)?

If you paste the results it may show information as to how to unhide it, then you would be able to move it from Finder. If you move it now it will still be hidden. The mv command does moving.

 

[o2byz]

NAME-iMac:desktop o2byz$ cd /volumes/HP/users/o2byz/desktop/
NAME-iMac:desktop o2byz$ ls
Hardie done
Television
The.Event.S01E06.avi
desktop.ini
Work
Chris-Driffills-iMac:desktop o2byz$

What would be the command to move the Work folder from the current drive to the iMac drive?

 

[angelwatt]

You left off the arguments for the ls command, the -lO part. Here's the move command though. It should place the Work item on your Desktop.

mv /volumes/HP/users/o2byz/desktop/Work ~/Desktop/

Edit:
I believe you'll be able to unhide the item doing the command:

SetFile -a v ~/Desktop/Work

after you move it. The only catch is you'll need to install the Developer Tools from the Mac install disc because the SetFile command isn't part of the normal install.

 

[o2byz]

Ugh. It said it's a "read only file system". I'm guessing I need to use a PC to change the status of the folder then I should be fine. Thanks for the help though. I learned a lot.

 

[angelwatt]

Ugh. It said it's a "read only file system". I'm guessing I need to use a PC to change the status of the folder then I should be fine. Thanks for the help though. I learned a lot.

Doh, we should have used copy instead of move. Just replace mv with cp. The drive is likely formatted as NTFS, which Mac only has read capabilities for unless you install 3rd party plugins like NTFS-3G that enable write capabilities for NTFS. But you don't need that to copy off the data right now. Also, I edited my post above right before you posted so give it a look.

 

[o2byz]

would you recommend clearing these drives off and reformatting the pc ones from NTFS to HFS+?

 

[angelwatt]

would you recommend clearing these drives off and reformatting the pc ones from NTFS to HFS+?

If you only need to access the drives from Mac then I would reformat as HFS. If a Windows machine still needs to access it go for FAT. FAT has a 4GB per file limit though, which NTFS does not. If you have such large files then keep it NTFS and look into getting a 3rd party plugin for Mac to handle NTFS. Someone also created a guide here at MacRumors for enabling NTFS read/write in Snow Leopard. I haven't tried the guide yet. Others have replied that it works though. Here's also the MR Guide for Hard Drives.

 

[o2byz]

I tried the copy command like you said and it gave me this message:

"Work is a directory (not copied)"

WTH?!

 

[angelwatt]

I tried the copy command like you said and it gave me this message:

"Work is a directory (not copied)"

That's right, it's weird that way. You have to use the -R argument to tell it to copy recursively.

cp -R /volumes/HP/users/o2byz/desktop/Work ~/Desktop/

 

[o2byz]

Ok, so that command seemed to work cause I typed it...I heard the external (PC) drive start humming but I don't see Terminal making any changes nor did a copy window come up. It's a large folder with several sub-folders so I'm assuming it may take a second.

How long should I wait to see before I restart my Mac?

 

[angelwatt]

How long should I wait to see before I restart my Mac?

Wait until the command prompt comes back (the NAME-iMac:desktop o2byz$ in your case). That's how you know when the command is done. We could have also added the v argument, which is for verbose and it would output the files as they are being copied, which at least gives a little more feedback.

 

[o2byz]

Will do. I think once the copy is all complete I will reformat this drive to a HFS+ and use it as my external drive on my iMac. One more question, this drive is split into three partitions because it was the main drive in my old PC. It has a recovery partition and some other mysterious partition. When I reformat the drive to HFS+, do I need to do anything special other than say I want to reformat?

 

[angelwatt]

Disk Utility will give you the options to recover those partitions so you can make use of the entire drive or create a new set of partitions if you like. I think it should be pretty straight forward once you get in there to do it.

 

[o2byz]

Thank You Very Much!!

 

[o2byz]

Believe it or not that didn't work. It took like 2 hours and finally showed what you said it would and still couldn't find the folder. I could literally scream. I'll try it with the -v command to see if that makes any difference.

 

[angelwatt]

Believe it or not that didn't work. It took like 2 hours and finally showed what you said it would and still couldn't find the folder. I could literally scream. I'll try it with the -v command to see if that makes any difference.

As I mentioned before, copying the file over wouldn't necessarily make it visible. See post 12 about installing the developer tools and using the SetFile command to make it visible.