Thousands of My Files Are Gone!

[Laisha]

Somehow, I seem to have lost more than half of my files overnight!

The error messages all say, “The file…couldn’t be opened.”

I have no idea what happened, and all I did was turn the machine off last night and then on this morning.

HELP?!?

 

[casperes1996]

This isn't much to go on. Is it only with Preview opening files? Could you post an ls -l of one of the files?

 

[Laisha]

Is it only with Preview opening files?

No. That's what I get when I try to open a file.

Could you post an ls -l of one of the files?

I would love to, but I don't know what -l is or how to get it. Please advise.

 

[casperes1996]

I would love to, but I don't know what -l is or how to get it. Please advise.

Open Terminal. Type "ls -l " (space at the end)
Drag a file that doesn't work into Terminal.

Want to see if correct permissions are set, if its an alias, etc.

No. That's what I get when I try to open a file.

You say that but all the dialog boxes show Preview as the program trying to open the files in question. They are also all images and PDFs which open in Preview, so my question was more if it's only files that Preview open or also, let's say music files, Pages documents and such.

 

[Laisha]

Open Terminal. Type "ls -l " (space at the end)
Drag a file that doesn't work into Terminal.

Thank you!

...so my question was more if it's only files that Preview open or also, let's say music files, Pages documents and such.

It's mostly .jpg and .heic files. But I have found quite a few .numbers. Many of my Word docx show a generic preview but are empty rather than giving an error, and the same with a few .xlsx files. All of them appear to have been created and/or saved in spring and summer of 2019.

But my huge concern is the images.

 

[casperes1996]

Thank you!

View attachment 902226



It's mostly .jpg and .heic files. But I have found quite a few .numbers. Many of my Word docx show a generic preview but are empty rather than giving an error, and the same with a few .xlsx files. All of them appear to have been created and/or saved in spring and summer of 2019.

But my huge concern is the images.

Well the file listing looks right, though a bit confused about the folder naming; Compressed.Dropbox - Is this data from Dropbox? Perhaps you could redo load it from your Dropbox account.

Are these files all on an external volume? Does you Mac otherwise operate correctly? Is it possible to test if the files are accessible on another computer if they are on an external drive? I assume you have no Backup?

Are we certain the file extension is properly recognised? With that many ’.’ characters in the path, the .jpg may just be seen as part of the name. Try Get Info in Finder and see under extension.
File extensions don’t really mean anything deep down, but it may influence how a program like Preview tries opening the file.

If you have a broken text document you can try opening it with less in Terminal
less <file>
which should unequivocally show the contents of that file. Not so useful for an image since it’ll assume ASCII when showing the file, but you could use it to check a broken text document to see if the contents of your files appears to be intact.

 

[XDR]

I believe this is the “new” smart sync feature which Dropbox introduced lately to all paid plans.

Go to settings and switch it off.
Good luck!

 

[NoBoMac]

Or might be some backup software being used that might be compressing things, since accessing off external volume. Or the Dropbox mention.

In either case, should not be accessing off external if on the internal drive. Guessing Dropbox would restore from cloud their copy. If backup software, would need to restore using their software.