11-28-2006, 10:31 AM

Hi, this is my first post here. I hope someone can answer my question. Here's the situation. I have a Powerbook G4 running OSX (10.2) and OS 9. I have an ADS Technologies external harddrive on the machine as well. The external drive has had trouble mounting lately. I have no idea how I did it, but I managed to get it to mount this morning. I am able to access some of the files, but some of them have this little icon by them that is a blue circle with an italicized i in it instead of a folder icon. What does this icon mean? I tried to copy it to a folder on my internal drive, but it said I didn't have permission. After trying to copy it, the "folder" disappeared along with my files. I've done searches to try to find it but haven't found them yet. Attached is a picture of the icon. Thanks in advance for any help!

11-28-2006, 04:42 PM

Since I haven't gotten any answers from anyone on any of the forums that I have posted on, I'll give the long story in hopes that someone will know the answer. Pardon the long post, I am just at a loss here. BTW, I am a graphic designer mostly servicing the music industry. Most of the work that is inaccessible is cd covers and other graphic design work. I am able to copy files off of the drive that don't have this little icon.

About a month ago, my powerbook went out. I was freaking out, but ok because all of my work was backed up on the external. So, there was no real work lost except for one job that I was working on. I always back up to the external and then burn cd's or dvd's every so often. Well, DriveGenius restored my powerbook and all seemed well. I hooked up the external and it seemed fine. I burned a cd of a job and it said the files were corrupted. Bad sign. I then attempted to back everything up off of the external, but it said some files were bad. I thought it was still a powerbook problem. Then I noticed that every time I hooked up the external, my machine ran like a dog. I started scanning the external with DriveGenius last Tuesday. It took forever. I finally stopped it at about 4:45 this morning because I really wanted to try to get this job off of it and figured it was only scanning, not repairing yet. After 7 days, DriveGenius had scanned about 340,000,000 blocks out of 420,000,000 (or around there). Of those, it said about 6500 blocks were bad. The drive refused to mount, but by some miracle, I got it to mount this morning and that's the first time I ever saw that icon. I have successfully retrieved another job off of the external this morning, so only some files are bad - the ones with that icon. I tried to open one of the "folders" with the icon and it said I didn't have permission. So, I dragged and dropped the "folder" to my desktop. It said it couldn't copy it because the files were corrupted. I've almost finished recreating the pressing job, but there are others that are going to be bad that I will eventually need - like when a cd cover client comes back needing a reprint with a minor change or something like that. I could always get the files from the printer, but how lame is that?!

11-28-2006, 05:39 PM

You might try the Apple disscussion boards with this question.

11-30-2006, 02:45 PM

The icon is the .png picture for a Macintosh OS X information file. But the reason that it is showing up is because your drive is hosed, as you already know. The problem on the drive is going to corrupt some files beyond repair, screw up permissions and generally make your life miserable. If your printer has originals I would tell him your tale of woe and get them back.
Good luck!

12-01-2006, 04:47 AM

A bit of a disaster :-(

I'd recommend getting Tiger 10.4 and choosing the wipe disk option when installing.