OSX: Is there some way to rebuild/restore resource forks?

March 13, 2007 7:27 PM

Is there a way to restore or rebuild resource forks for files/folders copied to a FAT32 hdd?

Ok, so I'm troubleshooting an external hdd for a friend. She says she was copying stuff to it when her cat turned off the powerstrip it was plugged into. Eeep.

Anyway, now many of what I'm assuming used to be folders appear as Unix Executables under OS X. Many of these files are the same size (e.g. 1.25GB for the ones containing MP3s). The drive is FAT32, so I tried it under XP and the folders show up as empty. However, in OS X, I am unable to correct what I'm guessing are stripped-off resource forks.

Does anyone know of any utilities which might help me recover these files? Remember, it's FAT32 drive, so HFS-only utils do me no good.

Any help is much appreciated.

posted by GS1977 to computers & internet (4 comments total)

It's not resource forks you're interested in. No, you're not trying to repair stripped-off resource forks. You want to repair a damaged FAT filesystem, which is a completely different matter.

Have you tried the Disk Utility application that ships with OSX? It's not terrific at FAT filesystem repair, but it's certainly capable of it.
posted by majick at 8:05 PM on March 13, 2007

it's FAT32 drive, so HFS-only utils do me no good.

To expand on what majick said, if it isn't hfs it can't actually have real resource forks to get corrupted in the first place. I'm pretty sure os x has some way of handling resource forks on non-hfs drives but I don't know what that is offhand. Most modern mac software doesn't really use resource forks anyways, and directories full of mp3s are just that -- regular directories.
posted by advil at 8:48 PM on March 13, 2007

Also, directories don't even HAVE resource forks. Why do you think resource forks are the issue?

It's not at all a normal thing for directories to turn into files, let alone 1.25GB ones. You have some kind of filesystem corruption going on, but heaven knows what actually happened. It sounds like you think that directories full of files somehow turned into a single file that contains all the contents of the files, but that sounds pretty unlikely to me.
posted by xil at 9:54 PM on March 13, 2007

hey guys. thanks for the suggestions. sorry it took me a bit to get back to this thread, but i think i forgot to enable notifications.

anyway, i see where you're coming from. the main reason i was focused on the resource fork thing was because that was what several sources suggested when dealing with these so-called unix executable files.

so, coincidentally (or perhaps not), this same friend is now having the same or similar issue on another fat32 external. the one glaring difference here is that i looked at that drive from my system and it was fine. the FS was intact, there were no corrupted files to speak of, nothing. now, with the drive back in the friend's possession, she says that after plugging it into her macbook she began noticing the mysterious unix exec files.

what could be happening? should i try to rebuild the FAT with some windows/dos utility? i still have the original problem drive, so i can try whatever with it. your suggestions are very welcome.

thanks again.
posted by GS1977 at 3:12 AM on April 2, 2007