When files just disappear on my MacBook Air and don’t show up again, are there traces of the file on the hard drive? If I haven’t deleted (i.e. put them in Trash and empty) them how and why do they disappear?
It has happened that some files do reappear after freeing up space on the hard drive. But for those that don’t reappear, shouldn’t there be some trace of them on the hard drive?
Why do you think it is normal for files to spontaneously disappear, like unstable radioactive atoms? 
Maybe go into single-user mode and run fsck on your file system to check for corruption…
As for traces of the files, if they are still on readable sectors then there may be some of them still there even if their metadata is not…
This is not normal.
I am not familiar with Mac OS. Can you see the files that might still be in your trash bin? Right click on Windows does that. Then click to restore the files.
Is your drive at or near maximum capacity? I have never been at that point, so not sure what happens. But you should get a warning.
Are you cloud storage linked? Again, something I am not familiar with. Are the files maybe being shifted off local storage to the cloud?
Just some guesses.
What are these files, where are they supposed to be, and what do you mean “freeing up space?”
Are you storing files in iCloud?
Thanks Kedikat. I freed up more space(deleted several files), switched off the computer and rebooted. I found one file and will wait for others to reappear. Perhaps it requires some refreshing before the ones I’m missing reappear. I’ll take it to a technician to see what is visible in cache.
My best bet is that the files have always been there (well, since they were created), in the same place, but you aren’t sure where that place was, and you were mostly accessing them via a “recent files” or “favorites” link or the like.
Yes Correct Chronos.
Recent Files on MacOS does not contain any files. It contains links to the actual files. Links effectively just contain the location of the actual file, but nothing else. The OS maintains those links on a rather ad-hoc basis. It only keeps a limited number of such links, and the links are removed if you don’t use them after some period of time. So you have no guarantee that the link will persist. The actual file never goes away, it sits where it was placed all along.
Personally I wish they never provided the facility. It just confuses people, and half the time gets cluttered up with stuff you don’t want to visit again. But some people love it.
Thanks Francis_Vaughan. i was wondering about the same issue. It is unnerving at times not being able to find the ‘link’ to the file when you want it.
Almost at the extreme top right of your screen is a magnifying glass icon. Click that, and type in the name of the file, and it’ll find it for you.
Not necessarily. I’ve been using that tool as well to find files but it comes up short for the same reasons Francis_Vaughan pointed out.
What reason did Francis_Vaughan point out that would render the search tool not able to find a file that hasn’t moved? I think you may have misunderstood. FV specifically said the shortcuts might be gone but the files themselves are still there, in which case the search tool would still find them.
ETA, Disclaimer: I don’t have a Mac and have very little experience with them, however, I’m assuming these features (shortcuts/recently used files/search function) work pretty much the same as they do in Windows.
How full is your hard drive? If you’re so tight on space that deleting ‘several files’ makes a noticeable difference that could be causing problems.
I suspect you don’t understand cache. You’re not going to find any missing files there, especially not after rebooting your computer.
Thanks Joey-P. Deleting files did make a difference. Sorry I guess I did misunderstand the use of cache.“it stores a shadow copy of some data in the main RAM for quicker access”. But the fact is that using the spotlight search’ didn’t necessarily show the files I was looking for.
Mom, is that you?
I’m the IT department for my nonagenarian mother. In her case, it turns out that every “disappearance” or misbehaving of her Mac is something she did.
But I doubt that in this case. I’d be very concerned about your machine and its hard drive, Octogon. Back up whatever’s really important to you and take it in pronto (to a well-reviewed AUTHORIZED Mac repair shop, or the Apple Store). Something’s seriously wrong.
Best of luck… keep us posted!
My missing files files have shown up again. Freeing up space solved that issue.
Yeah, it has nothing at all to do with “freeing up space."
What do you think the problem is then?
Is it an iCloud issue?
I think, first of all, you need to tell us exactly how you are “finding” these files, and where you think the files should be.
A screenshot would help.