Weird shadow directory structure

TidBITS Talk
1

I’m putting this to the TBT community to see if it rings any bells. I’m stumped. Here’s the situation:

When using the Photoshop Elements Organizer (the photo catalog app, which is separate from the photo editing app), sometimes it imports images but then shows them as broken. Going to the Info pane, I see this as the location (my MacBook Pro’s internal drive is named “WinterX”):

WinterX@snap-4639538/Users/jeffcarlson/Dropbox/Cargo Shuttle/Lessons/Lesson 5/

What is “@snap-4639538”?

Is it possible that Elements is reading the files from an APFS snapshot??

After lots of troubleshooting, I thought I had this nailed down to happening only when I have the OWC Thunderbold 3 Dock connected, and disconnecting that sometimes allows me to import successfully. But this example above happened just now, and the dock isn’t connected.

I’ve run Disk Utility, and there’s no apparent issue there. Doesn’t show up as a separate drive or anything funky. No directory corruption. It doesn’t appear to be a Dropbox issue, because it happens in other folders, too. I thought perhaps it was due to Mojave’s feature for storing files in iCloud and removing files quietly in the background to save space, but it happens in non-iCloud folders, too. I also suspected that maybe Elements Organizer isn’t coded to properly see iCloud-stored files, but that doesn’t seem to be the case either. The only thing I have not yet tried is nuking the drive from orbit and starting over from scratch.

Any ideas? Google search doesn’t come up with this mysterious “@snap” construction. (I do have a ScanSnap scanner, but that seems highly unlikely to be related.) This is just so weird.

Many thanks to your big brains,
Jeff

2

I’d say your instincts are probably right, it’s a partial file, just changes being marked via some snapshot process. Your backup? Backblaze or similar?

3

I do have Backblaze. Also a Time Machine disk that’s connected to the dock and mounted when the dock is connected. Why would Elements be reading from a temporary location, though? It’s like it’s deliberately working harder to do the wrong thing.

4

See, all I had to do was write to TidBITS Talk and all my questions are answered. :slight_smile:

For some reason, the Elements Organizer is reading files from TimeMachine snapshots. I attempted to edit a file earlier today and it claimed the file was offline. When it kicked into its automatic search, it identified the file as being part of a snapshot as the path. Sigh. Bug submitted.

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