[X4U] Re: Reprise: Disappearing folders

[Bob Salsburg]

x4u-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com  ->
x4u-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com   -> 8/4/05 10:42 PM  (snip)

> I'm confused. Icons in the sidebar are really
> aliases of the real items. If they disappear without
> being actually removed, I think it means the volume
> they're actually on is no longer available.
> 
> So none of the folders or files were actually "on" the
> sidebar; they had a physical location on some volume.
> For example, they might have been on a network device
> that was no longer connected. Or a removable flash drive,
> or hard drive that's no longer there.
> 
> So I think I'm really confused. What am I missing here?

Not as confused as you think, Jon.

The common - but maybe not causal - factor is that all the folders that have
disappeared thus far have had aliases on the Sidebar. They are busy folders
with various download categories assigned to them, Safari Downloads, etc.
One was my Pictures folder, not user-created. With that one exception, each
was a subfolder of the Documents folder.

As I stated earlier, I was in the process of moving files into organized
folders, and deleting some superfluous files. I went to the window tool bar
to create a new folder and the button was grayed. As it happened, the Delete
button was also grayed. I closed the window and tried to reopen a new
Window, The New Finder Window menu command was grayed on the File menu as
were those whose buttons were missing New Folder and Delete. Thinking that
the Finder had gone South, I tried restarting the it from Force Quit. It
came back quickly in apparent good order, but the folder I was working in
was gone. In Terminal, it shows in an LS, but trying to CD to it gets
something like Directory Doesn't Exist. It also then that I discovered that
the Sidebar alias was gone. So Jon is correct in that the source of the
alias is gone, so the alias is gone too.

That's two folders on two Macs. Both are 10.4.2. The lose wasn't that great
since most of the things I had in the folders was backed up, but the next
person it happens to will likely not be prepared or understanding.

Bob