.spotlight on usb

[mrssevage]

Hi

 

Member of SLT in my school still uses USB with her mac. Today she came to me saying half of the files from are gone. I have uploaded whats left to onedrive to make sure its backed up and noticed .spotlight folder (it is hidden folder I am assuming). On USB itself are 3 what it looks like corrupted files (see pic attached).

 

Is it possible to get missing files back?

 

Appreciate any advice.

 

Thank you

M

 

PS: I had conversation with the person about not using USB many times!!!!!!!!!

[Norphy]

I hate to say it but I think the chances are that they're gone. The OS is showing those files as 0KB.

 

You might be able to get the files back using a utility like GetDataBack but at best I think your chances are 50/50. I'd say to the teacher to use this as a learning experience.

[Chaniel]

Definitely looks corrupted, you might have some luck with a file recovery program like Recuva but from experience, I doubt it'll work.

 

From what I remember, the .spotlight folder on Mac's is created whenever any drive (USB or otherwise) is plugged into a Mac, it'll store index info about the files on the disk to make searching faster, things like file sizes, types, creation dates etc. The actual files won't be in that folder.

[paulkerton]

.spotlight is the Mac search indexing folder.

 

As for USB, it should be blocked at the OS level, so they can't use it. Leaving it open is a massive data security issue.

[Norphy]

It's also worth noting that Macs are also very fussy about having removable drives removed properly. On a Mac, you must eject a USB drive and wait for the OS that it's safe for you to remove it before you remove it, otherwise there's every chance that this will happen. I suspect your user pulled the drive out in the middle of a write operation, which would have caused this.

[mrssevage]

.spotlight is the Mac search indexing folder.

 

As for USB, it should be blocked at the OS level, so they can't use it. Leaving it open is a massive data security issue.

 

Agreed! Its just that more difficult to do when it's SLT member

[Primus]

It's also worth noting that Macs are also very fussy about having removable drives removed properly. On a Mac, you must eject a USB drive and wait for the OS that it's safe for you to remove it before you remove it, otherwise there's every chance that this will happen. I suspect your user pulled the drive out in the middle of a write operation, which would have caused this.

 

To be fair I haven't found this at all. Mac OS nags like crazy if you don't eject but I've done all sorts over the years and never had any data corruption.

[admars]

the last time I saw file names like that on a usb stick, was that one time, when I bought a really big usb stick, really cheaply on ebay, and learned why not to buy "bargain" usb sticks from China Luckily I had just used it to copy some files from one computer to another so didn't lose any data. I just binned it, nothing would get the file back.

 

Recuva is great for deleted files from usb stick/memory card. not sure about corrupted though.

Edited July 7, 2021 by admars

[mrssevage]

the last time I saw file names like that on a usb stick, was that one time, when I bought a really big usb stick, really cheaply on ebay, and learned why not to buy "bargain" usb sticks from China Luckily I had just used it to copy some files from one computer to another so didn't lose any data. I just binned it, nothing would get the file back.

 

Recuva is great for deleted files from usb stick/memory card. not sure about corrupted though.

 

I have used Recuva but it didn't bring anything up however when restoring instead of choosing usb I have restored it to a different folder. Does it matter?