Corrupted files

Previously I attached a USB drive to my airport extreme and when I moved files to it from my MBP (or simply reorganized files on the drive) the drive became corrupted. Folders would disappear and files could not be accessed. When I removed the drive from the router and connected it directly to a computer (either my PC or my MBP) all the files and folders became visible and accessible again. Neither Apple nor anyone else could explain what caused the issue.

Later I noticed lots of hidden files buried in the directories. Whether it was smart or not, I manually deleted all of them. When I reconnected the drive via the router, everything appeared normal again.

When it happened again I gave up using the drive. Yesterday I bought a NetGear ReadyNAS and connected it via a router LAN port rather than USB. I was hoping to eliminate this issue...the files are valuable and I can't risk losing them.

Tonight I started moving a rather large portion of digital photo files from my MBP to the NAS. When I look at those directories from my PC, I see a lot of hidden files (Again). Now I think I understand that these hidden files are needed for storage devices not fully Apple-ish (for lack of a better term.)

I'm just afraid I'm going to have a similar issue and corrupt the data with all this apple file baggage hanging around. Is there a way to copy the files without creating the hidden files? Will accessing the NAS from my PC make the issue worse?

I can't really answer your question in total.... but I have had the same problem using an external hard drive (I don't have a NAS).

First, I don't know of a way to copy files from your Mac on to the drive without also copying the file meta data (which shows up as hidden files). I also deleted them at first but it just got to be too much work.

And, I found out by mixing the drive usage with both my PC and Mac that it was causing corruption. Not all the time, but enough to convince me to keep them separate. It didn't seem to matter whether the drive was formatted to FAT-32 or NTFS although the likelihood of corruption was worse when using NTFS.

I know this didn't answer all your questions but it may give you some idea of how to go forward with your new NAS.

OS X compliant volume on a NAS???

Is it possible to format a NAS volume that is compatible with OS X that doesn't result in the hidden files? I've corrupted two drives (OK, same drive twice) shared between a PC and my MacBook Pro. It was full of hidden files that once deleted made the drive usable again. Maybe that was a coincidence but...

NAS uses network protocols to get to the drive so format is irrelevant. I've never heard of hidden files causing corruption.

Any folder OS X touches is going to have a .DS_Store file. You cannot stop it.

You can check the wiki for a liitle info about these files - here.

It wasn't just the .DS_Store files, but many of the normal files had a corresponding smaller hidden version.