Strange Mojave problem

I was tuning up my Mojave system after an Avid Link update, and decided to zap the PRAM. Instead of Command-Option-P-R on Startup, I mistakenly used Command-Shift-P-R. Now I can’t see any of the files on my SSD, but they can be called through a Command-F find routine.

I re-installed my system, but it didn’t solve my problem. In Disk Utility, the Erase, Restore and Unmount are greyed out. In my left hand Sidebar, all the links I added have disappeared, and I could not drag them back to their original places.

In all other respects, my machine acts normally.

I’ve never had/seen a problem like this in 30 years of Mac​ ​use. Any assistance would be warmly welcomed.

If its an external SSD try an SMC reset:


If it is internal you might have to use commands in Terminal to get it back (not my expertise!)

The SMC is firmware on the computer, so makes no difference whether the boot drive is internal or external; SSD, Fusion or Hard. I’m not aware of any Terminal commands that will reset SMC.

Sorry - I was referring to reformatting the drive from Terminal. There are some Unix/Terminal commands that might work if macOS Disk Utility refuses to “see” it.

The disk mounts, but will not show its contents. I’m sure that this is a corrupted Finder problem. I tried to delete the Finder plist, but the computer refused to allow it. In the end, I had to bite the bullet and use Time Machine to restore everything.

In retrospect, this would be a useful way of hiding a disk’s contents, if only I knew the commands to replicate it.

Is this at all reproducible? I’ve never heard of cmd-shift-p-r doing anything. If I had a spare Mac lying around I’d be tempted to try it myself, but the Mac I usually use for that kind of tinkering is right now number crunching a large batch job I don’t want to interrupt.

bobhaydengilbert,

Does the problem occur on more than one user login?

What do Terminal.app commands show?

ls -al /Volumes
ls -al /Volumes/put-diskname-here

Sounds exactly like a permissions issue or domain/groups issue; but it also sounds like you’ve moved past this by reinstalling?

If not, try creating a fresh (admin) user account, and see if it behaves as expected; if yes, we can walk you through the steps to repair your existing user space.

Once you are in another Admin user space, navigate to /Users/, and select your original user space; select ‘Get Info’, and then at the bottom of said window, record (or screenshot) the permissions section. In particular, if you see an item grayed out item indicating ‘fetching’ (or similar), we have the answer and can fix it easily (but I need to know what else is there).

Just to clarify, are both your startup system and user home folders on the same volume/partition on a single disk? If not, we likely have a different domain issue.

Command-Shift-P-R does nothing I’ve ever heard of, so I’d suggest it’s coincidental.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

HTH

Frederico

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