What Happened to My Backup Drive?

[jparker402]

Just got curious about my WD My Passport for Mac's capacity. So I went to Finder to have a look at the drive, and I am now seeing things that I don't know how they got there; most notably, the My Passport For Mac alias and My Passport For Mac alias 2. I don't remember creating alias, have no idea now how they got there, and don't know why they exist! I am going to post a screenshot below to try to help (and because I am still learning how to attach images to posts, so I need the practice).

 

[Erehy Dobon]

It appears that you have inadvertently created three aliases in the top level directory of your WD My Passport external drive

• My Passport for Mac
• My Passport for Mac alias
• My Passport for Mac alias 2

all three of which apparently point back to your external drive (as is shown in your highlighted screenshot's selection).

Personally I would delete all three aliases without the fear of any ill effect.

Or you could simply leave them. They shouldn't interfere with anything.

 

[jparker402]

It appears that you have inadvertently created three aliases in the top level directory of your WD My Passport external drive

• My Passport for Mac
• My Passport for Mac alias
• My Passport for Mac alias 2

all three of which apparently point back to your external drive (as is shown in your highlighted screenshot's selection).

Personally I would delete all three aliases without the fear of any ill effect.

Or you could simply leave them. They shouldn't interfere with anything.

Thank you very much! I have no idea in the world how I created the aliases! But would the one without an alias after Mac be an alias? Which is the "real" backup?

 

[DeltaMac]

The icon showing an arrow in the bottom left corner indicates that is an alias. The "real" backup is the drive itself. You made 3 aliases. You can safely delete all 3

 

[Erehy Dobon]

The actual drive is the greyed out one in the lower left (the first navigation column on the left).

The second navigation column are all of the items in the top left of the item highlighted in the left greyish column. These include the Backups.backupdb folder (where your Mac's Time Machine backups reside -- don't delete that! ), the three aliases you inadvertently created, and what appears to be some sort of Western Digital utility software for your Mac.

The third column reflects the contents of the item selected in the second column which is one of your aliases. The fourth column (on the right) is empty because you haven't selected anything in the third column.

None of this is specific to your WD backup drive. This is the way this hierarchical directory view works on macOS.

In fact, pretty much all desktop operating systems have this type of folder view: macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, commercial UNIX, whatever.

• Column A: list of stuff
• Column B: list of stuff of item selected in column A
• Column C: list of stuff of item selected in column B

Note that the column browser in iTunes works the same way: Genres > Artists > Albums.

 

[jparker402]

I hate to appear as stupid as I obviously must be, but how in the world did I create any aliases, let alone three? The only thing I have ever done with the backup is to check to see if things were actually getting saved into it. Got a little paranoid several months ago because I didn't remember if I formatted the drive originally when I hooked it up. And when I looked into the backups.backups just now, I doesn't look like when I looked at it last. Thought I was going to see a cascade of days. Now I am seeing a list of the folders and files.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

No one can answer that because no one has been standing at your shoulder every single moment you have been on your computer.

If you hover your mouse over the blue My Passport for Mac alias in the second column, right mouse click and select Get Info, you can see for yourself when that alias was created. You can do the same with the other two aliases. Maybe there's a pattern, maybe there isn't. You'll have to investigate yourself and try to draw a conclusion if you see one.

The contents of the Backups.backupdb folder is unrelated to this. It contains special Time Machine-specific database files which aren't meant to be interacted with by end users in Finder.

If these additional aliases were a common Time Machine bug, we'd see dozens and dozens of similar Q&A forum threads on the topic but there are none. That points to user error regardless of whether you remember doing it or not.

For sure, I make mistakes time to time while using my various technology devices and I don't always remember doing so. And my memory isn't infallible and it won't be getting better as the days pass.

But that's just me...

 

[jparker402]

No one can answer that because no one has been standing at your shoulder every single moment you have been on your computer.

If you hover your mouse over the blue My Passport for Mac alias in the second column, right mouse click and select Get Info, you can see for yourself when that alias was created. You can do the same with the other two aliases. Maybe there's a pattern, maybe there isn't. You'll have to investigate yourself and try to draw a conclusion if you see one.

The contents of the Backups.backupdb folder is unrelated to this. It contains special Time Machine-specific database files which aren't meant to be interacted with by end users in Finder.

If these additional aliases were a common Time Machine bug, we'd see dozens and dozens of similar Q&A forum threads on the topic but there are none. That points to user error regardless of whether you remember doing it or not.

For sure, I make mistakes time to time while using my various technology devices and I don't always remember doing so. And my memory isn't infallible and it won't be getting better as the days pass.

But that's just me...

Thanks! Did as you suggested. The first My Passport entry, the first alias and the second alias were all created at different times, months apart, and when I am sure I had no idea what an "alias" was. They appear to be kicking off at four to six month intervals. Guess it will remain a mystery to me!!!

 

[Erehy Dobon]

This is the computing equivalent of waking up with a mysterious bruise.

"What the... I didn't drink that much last night" is my typical reaction followed by "Maybe I don't want to know", a laugh and shrug.

👍

 

[Boyd01]

how in the world did I create any aliases, let alone three?

Maybe you typed CMD-CTL-A, which will create an alias? This might have been done by mistake when you intended to type CMD-A which is the shortcut to select all.

 

[jparker402]

Maybe you typed CMD-CTL-A, which will create an alias? This might have been done by mistake when you intended to type CMD-A which is the shortcut to select all.

Wow! Me mistyping certainly wouldn't be a first! That is entirely possible! Would I have had to have the backup drive selected when I did that?

 

[Boyd01]

Yes, that will create an alias of anything currently selected. Another handy way to (intentionally) create an alias is to select a file and hold down CMD-OPTION as you drag it.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you created some aliases by mistake, you can just delete them.
They're only small (very small) files and have no actual data in them.