Had an interesting experience today. Took a break in the action and booted into OS9. Ran Disk Warrior 2.1 on my OS X drive.<br><br>It found a really crazy, no name file that was "defective" and dutifully copied it into a special folder. There were all sorts of directory and other errors associated with the file.<br><br>Filename: temp205971, located in HFS+ Private Data<br><br>File Size: 3.7 TB (not a typo)<br><br>BBEdit wasn't too thrilled with the idea of opening it. ResEdit sort of choked and coughed a bit.<br><br>Copied this 3.7 TB sized file onto a floppy.....amazing the capacity of a floppy disk. Finder copy didn't go well, however, perhaps because I haven't used the Imation SuperDisk 2X drive for more than a year. It shrunk a bit in size. 4K now. I'm amazed it would even copy.<br><br><br><br>128k_Mac<br><br>The box said "Requires Microsoft Windows or better" so I bought a Macintosh.

That does NOT sound good. I would backup and erase your HD, then restore. That's what you get for using OS X, he he!<br><br>--------------------------<br>John Bailey ([color:red]Bdog</font color=red>)<br><br>Email Me! ---> bdog_111@yahoo.com

You have to understand that in Xese the "T" stands for tiny <br><br>And that's true too.--Shakespeare, King Lear

U 2 are just envious of my special file.<br><br>Well I happen to know what a find it is.<br><br>And BTW the floppy it's stored on is an elderly 800k, not the hyper modern 1.4 MB.<br><br>Although I do have to admit it isn't as impressive at 4k as it was at 3.7TB. <br><br>Talk about a catalog error in the directory..........<br><br>LOL<br><br>128k_Mac<br><br>The box said "Requires Microsoft Windows or better" so I bought a Macintosh.

I've had a file like that before it was some sort of preference file on my Dad's iBook, it would not delete so i did get info on it and it said it was around 2 TB. It went away after I did a disk repair using Tech Tool (Disk First Aid did not fix it) and it worked<br><br>“Here can be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valorous and pure of heart may find the Holy Grail in the aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh…”<br><br>- Monty Python and The Holy grail<br>

I've had a file like that before it was some sort of preference file on my Dad's iBook, it would not delete so i did get info on it and it said it was around 2 TB. It went away after I did a disk repair using Tech Tool (Disk First Aid did not fix it) and it worked <br><br>“Here can be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valorous and pure of heart may find the Holy Grail in the aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh…”<br><br>- Monty Python and The Holy grail<br>

heh, MacGuru, looks like you double clicked your post <br><br>I suspect sooner or later everyone sees one of these files. No one, other than MacFixIt, seems to have a name for them. Ted Landau calls them "file from hell" or "folder from hell" but they all seem to be a little different and I don't know that a common term is approrpiate.<br><br>I've seen five or six, usually when summoned by offspring or a friend to get rid of one. They usually are visible and take the icon of generic file or folder. I've never been able to open one and look at content, as an error of some sort usually results from using some utility.<br><br>They apparently (pure speculation) begin life as an empty file with no content or an empty folder. For whatever reason the OS (this is my first one with OS X and the suggestion has been made that such files are created by some obscure bug in HFS+ file system) modifies the -0- k file and it winds up with a file header and/or ending in which the logical beginning/end is totally skewed and a weird number results.<br><br>The strangest one I've read about was on MacFixIt where the file "size" was a huge negative number. Prior to this file I'd never seen one whose "size" was in terrabyes (ignoring yoyo52's comment naturally).<br><br>This is first one I've had Disk Warrior 2.1 successfully isolate and copy to a "damaged file folder" (or some variant). TTP 2.x "repaired" one drive for me, but utilities have generally been failures in the majority of cases. Someone on MacFixIt once claimed they ran TTP or Norton half a dozen times and, voila, it was finally "repaired."<br><br>The problem sometimes shows up as visible file which should be hidden in the directory's invisible folder, created with OS 9 as the folder where all deleted files go until restart until they're deleted.<br><br>All problems I've seen except this one (note it was in "HFS+ Private Data") were with OS 9.0 and 9.04 which had problems flushing out this invisible folder anyway. (Don't think name is the same but it's something like this.) I haven't bothered to look for "HFS+ Private Data" folder on OS X volume yet, but am guessing it might function in similar way.<br><br>Most files (or folder) seem to pop up on desktop after a startup/restart. This one in OS X was only "discovered" by DW 2.1, however.<br><br>There really seem to be no "rules" or ready explanation or fix. There does seem to be one common factor and that's directory problems of some kind because the directory has tried to record numbers which are physically impossible in the real world based on size of the volume. I've read that a "file from hell" can even cause the directory to be overwritten causing loss of data. <br><br>I've never actually seen this, but merely knowing there's likely directory damage causes me to worry about such items. Some seem to just leave the item in the trash and forget about it, so your mileage may vary.<br><br>My best luck in getting rid of these files is to restart the Mac from an external drive, usually a Zip, FireWire HD, or SCSI HD, depending on what the OS version will support. One time I needed ResEdit to do something to one of them such as make it visible when it was already visible (!) or something weird. Pasting a custom icon on one sometimes works wonders I'm told, but literally any change in the file's attributes force the directory to "describe" its location properly. This can be easier said than done.<br><br>I've stuffed one, duplicated it, put both in a folder, stuffed that, then successfully trashed "the file." But this hasn't always worked. Main idea is to do something to it, hold down option key and empty trash. Attempts to unlock the file are usually a waste of time. Use of the option key apparently is a broader command with the OS when emptying trash than we know it to be. But I've never been able to option-empty trash with unaltered file. It isn't "locked," "busy" or etc. It's the wrong size.<br><br>Startup from another drive seems to be the simplest base to work from. I think (not sure) I had one that could be trashed immediately. If not then some utility may finally work. There's nothing logical about this, nor do I have sufficient experience (and I doubt anyone else has) to know a standard approach.<br><br>Except that formatting the drive always works. <br><br>128k_Mac<br><br>The box said "Requires Microsoft Windows or better" so I bought a Macintosh.