External Harddrive possible erasing files off internal drive.

Hello. I am wondering if anyone has had problems with files disappearing off of their internal drive. I have a external drive (made by cavalry) that regularly backs up my files via the time machine. For awhile I was noticing that some of my songs in my iTunes would mysteriously disappear. I just decided they were songs and I didn't really care much. Recently I lent my hard drive to a friend and just got it back. I backed up all my files yesterday and I am certain that files have now been removed from my internal drive (I am certain because they were payment confirmations from comcast that I saved).

I am wondering if anyone has any light they could shed on this subject. It is very nerve racking to think the device I'm using to make sure I don't lose files is destroying my files.

Thanks in advance,
Josh

Where do you have your iTunes library stored? If you have your iTunes library by default on the external hard drive, then when you sync music or buy music it will go to the external drive. The original may be removed from the internal drive after it's copied.

As far as other files are concerned, the external drive being hooked up would not have anything to do with file removal unless you purposely moved them to the external. Are you sure the files are gone? Have you done a Spotlight search to find them?

Regards.

Thank you for your reply.

Here are some more comments about the problem. My iTunes library is definitely located on my computer (/Users/[myusername]/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music). I also don't ever sync music or buy music, everything I do is done manually and I am certain the files are where I believed them to be. I have a very meticulous file scheme that I adhere to.

As for the files on my hard disk I am without a doubt certain they have been removed from my drive.

Another piece of information that I just realized after my last post is a whole directory of music has been removed from my iPod. I am certain this directory was there previous to Time Machine being run and is no longer there now.

It is my belief there is something in Time Machine that is causing these problems. I will be disabling Time Machine pending further investigations but I am wondering if anyone has noticed similar problems or has any information about this.

Thanks,
Josh

Hello, just wondering if anyone has any light they might be able to shed on this topic.

Thanks,
Josh

In Time Machine (I don't use it), check the Preferences thoroughly for any setting that might say something like "remove originals after transferring", or words to that effect.

Chscag is right - there's no way an external drive with no OS can remove something from an internal drive. It has to be something controlled by an application, or the OS on the internal drive.

Even moving a file from internal to external should not remove the original - or am I missing something about OS 10.5 or later?

PS. please put your Mac and MacOS specs in your profile. It helps us to help you better.

Time Machine will not remove the original files from the source disk .... must be something else.

Maybe an obvious question .... does anybody else have access to your machine ?

As suggested above, do a spotlight search aand see what that tells you.

Cheers ... McBie

Thank you both for your replies.

In response to hughvane: Time machine has some pretty basic settings and none of which include a remove original files or anything of the like.

Maybe I should have titled this post differently but I believe time machine is the object behind the problems here. It is the only variable unaccounted for in my system.

(Thanks for the note, I posted my specs)

To McBie:
I can agree Time Machine SHOULDN'T remove files from the source disk. However, it is the only program that is running in all instances of this error occurring. Maybe you have an idea what the "something else" could be because that is exactly what I am looking for.

To the second point no one has access to my computer or my iPod since I work from my laptop on a daily basis and my iPod is invariably with me, generally plugged into my laptop as was the case when I was running time machine to backup my files.

In regards to using spotlight: As I said in a previous post the files are no longer on my internal drive. Of this I am 100% certain. The files are also not on my iPod.

Thanks again for both your suggestions but I don't think we have quite hit the root of them problem.

You mention that no ne has access to your machine but stated that you lent your hdd to a friend ? Is this the same drive you are using for your TM ?

l0uismustdie said:

...... To McBie:
I can agree Time Machine SHOULDN'T remove files from the source disk. However, it is the only program that is running in all instances of this error occurring. Maybe you have an idea what the "something else" could be because that is exactly what I am looking for.
.......

Click to expand...

To be clear:
1) Time Machine WILL NOT remove files from the source disk.
2) Time Machine can NEVER be the only program that is running ... check your Activity Monitor and you will see at least 50 or 60 processes that are executing code.

When files get deleted, they end up in a "trash" , either inside or outside of the application in which they were deleted.
If they are not there, then that is the result of an " empty trash " command.

I can't quite put my finger on this one as I believe some crucial information is missing to get this addressed properly.

Cheers ... McBie

l0uismustdie said:

Hello. I am wondering if anyone has had problems with files disappearing off of their internal drive. I have a external drive (made by cavalry) that regularly backs up my files via the time machine. For awhile I was noticing that some of my songs in my iTunes would mysteriously disappear. I just decided they were songs and I didn't really care much. Recently I lent my hard drive to a friend and just got it back. I backed up all my files yesterday and I am certain that files have now been removed from my internal drive (I am certain because they were payment confirmations from comcast that I saved).

I am wondering if anyone has any light they could shed on this subject. It is very nerve racking to think the device I'm using to make sure I don't lose files is destroying my files.

Thanks in advance,
Josh

Click to expand...

I am having a similar problem. My iMac running Monterey 12.0.1 removes files from my documents. When I go to Time machine I can sometimes find them by going back several months. I then click restore and they go back to documents, but several days/months later they are gone again. Sometimes they can not fe found at all. I di not use icloud for any backups because I do not trust anything stored on the web. Any suggestions as to what us causing it and how to stop it?

Thanks

Dave

Welcome to the forum.

You posted to a 12 year old thread. It might have been better to start a new thread, but maybe a Moderator will move it for you.

Monterey is now up to 12.2.1, so you are a couple of updates behind. That said, it's not a bug.

Apple defaults to Documents and Desktop being synced to iCloud Drive. And it defaults to "Optimize Mac Storage" which is just about the same thing. What happens then is that the OS moves the original documents to iCloud drive, then puts a link on the internal drive to that external cloud location. When you are attached to the Internet, and you click on one of those documents to open, it downloads from the cloud and opens. But, if you are not on the Internet, those links don't work. I suspect that is what is happening to you.

The "fix" is both simple and hard. First, make a good backup of your system as there is a lot to do and big changes can sometimes lead to mistakes.

Second, create in your home folder two new folders, one labelled "Desktop local" and another called "Documents local." Now open the regular Desktop folder, select everything, then copy everything there and paste it to the "Desktop local" folder. Do the same to copy "Documents" to "Documents local." That process may take quite a while to complete as each file and folder on the Desktop and in Documents will have to be downloaded from the iCloud location.

Once you have the real files in the two folders with "local" in the name, open System preferences and click on Apple ID at the top of the window. There will be a window on the pane that looks like this:


If you click on the "Options" button on the iCloud Drive line, you should see this:



Your list of applications may be different. Those with checks store documents in the cloud to share with other devices. You can uncheck any you don't want, but the key here is the "Desktop & Documents Folders" item. Uncheck that to stop putting those two folder to the cloud. Click "Done." Now take away the check beside "Optimize Mac Storage" below the window. You can also remove anything else you don't want to use the cloud for storage, but I will say your security concerns are not really valid. Apple encrypts your stuff from end-to-end and has high security on the system overall. The only data breaches the have had were some celebrities with very weak AppleID passwords that got them broken in social hacks. So use a strong AppleID password and the cloud can be a nice place to put stuff.

Anyway, back to the process...

What SHOULD happen now is that those things stored in the cloud for Documents and Desktop should download again to those two folders and replace the links that were there. It has been reported that sometimes that process doesn't work, which is why we went through the drill earlier of putting the documents in the "local" folders.

So, let it run a bit to do the downloading and see if that fixed it. If a file or files are missing, you can copy it from the "local" folder to the one without "local." Once everything is back on the internal drive properly, you can delete the two "local" folders to get back the space.

And that should be it.