ELI5: What is a .lnk file, and how do I deal with it on a Mac?
October 4, 2020 11:23 PM Subscribe
A USB drive with some important-but-not-irrepleaceable folders is suddenly showing all .lnk files. What do? Details inside.
I don't have a printer at home, so I take files to my local copy shop to be printed. When I plugged it back in to my Mac after the last time I printed something, all the folders on it had been replaced by .lnk files. I've tried googling for how to fix this, and all of it is going completely over my head.
Does anyone have a simple idiotproof guide to how to recover the files? If they can't be, that's fine; there's nothing absolutely irreplaceable on there. I am reasonably competent with computers (Windows and Mac) though not to the extent of fiddling about with Terminal, and have access to both a Win10 laptop and my Mac. TIA!
I don't have a printer at home, so I take files to my local copy shop to be printed. When I plugged it back in to my Mac after the last time I printed something, all the folders on it had been replaced by .lnk files. I've tried googling for how to fix this, and all of it is going completely over my head.
Does anyone have a simple idiotproof guide to how to recover the files? If they can't be, that's fine; there's nothing absolutely irreplaceable on there. I am reasonably competent with computers (Windows and Mac) though not to the extent of fiddling about with Terminal, and have access to both a Win10 laptop and my Mac. TIA!
If you examine the .lnk files in a text editor, this might give some clues as to which path they were linked to on whichever computer they were moved to. This could prove helpful when talking to the copy shop.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 12:57 AM on October 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 12:57 AM on October 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
What is a .lnk file
It's a Windows Explorer shortcut. To a good first approximation it's the Windows equivalent of a Mac OS alias.
and how do I deal with it on a Mac?
As far as I am aware there exists no reasonable way to make use of a .lnk file on a Mac even if the thing that Windows might be able to find through it is actually available to Mac OS. In your case, it sounds like the link target is most likely missing altogether.
It sounds like something might've gone wrong at the print shop, where the originals got moved to their computer and instead of moving them back? shortcuts were created.
I concur. One plausible scenario: Clueless, possibly new, employee at copy shop has been told to move customer USB files onto the shop computer before printing them because sometimes USB sticks are not reliable. As a result of only having attended the kind of "IT training" session where they show you how to open Word and very little else, employee has no clue how to do that. So he looks it up on Windows For Dummies and follows the instructions to the letter.
WFD says always use the right-button for drag-and-drop, so that's what he does. Then he chooses "Move Here" from the pop-up menu, not understanding that when the manager said "move" they actually meant "copy". Has an "oh shit" moment on seeing that the folders have now all gone from the customer drive. Tries to drag them back; this time chooses "Create Shortcuts Here" in a state of fluster, knowing only that "Move Here" was somehow wrong. Failing to perceive the difference between the Windows icon for a shortcut to a folder and the Windows icon for a folder, breathes sigh of relief in the belief that all is now well.
Hands you back your now thoroughly emptied USB stick.
Does anyone have a simple idiotproof guide to how to recover the files? If they can't be, that's fine; there's nothing absolutely irreplaceable on there.
Windows shortcut files are quite small, so if that's all that's been written to the USB stick since the original folders were deleted from it, there's a good chance that most of what used to be there has not been overwritten and is still quite recoverable. If you're not comfortable with Terminal, your best bet will be using something like Recoverit or ZAR in trial mode.
About the only real trap for new players with this class of tool is trying to recover lost files from a device that you haven't immediately stopped writing files to. So don't download recovery tools onto your damaged drive, and don't try to save any recovered files straight back onto it either. As long as you make sure your damaged device is only ever read, never written, recovery is usually fairly straighforward; though you might well lose folder structure and/or filenames.
And I'm glad there's nothing totally irreplaceable on that stick. At least you haven't had to find out the hard way why it's a good idea only ever to hand over a USB stick to somebody else if everything on it is trivially replaceable.
posted by flabdablet at 4:29 AM on October 5, 2020 [6 favorites]
It's a Windows Explorer shortcut. To a good first approximation it's the Windows equivalent of a Mac OS alias.
and how do I deal with it on a Mac?
As far as I am aware there exists no reasonable way to make use of a .lnk file on a Mac even if the thing that Windows might be able to find through it is actually available to Mac OS. In your case, it sounds like the link target is most likely missing altogether.
It sounds like something might've gone wrong at the print shop, where the originals got moved to their computer and instead of moving them back? shortcuts were created.
I concur. One plausible scenario: Clueless, possibly new, employee at copy shop has been told to move customer USB files onto the shop computer before printing them because sometimes USB sticks are not reliable. As a result of only having attended the kind of "IT training" session where they show you how to open Word and very little else, employee has no clue how to do that. So he looks it up on Windows For Dummies and follows the instructions to the letter.
WFD says always use the right-button for drag-and-drop, so that's what he does. Then he chooses "Move Here" from the pop-up menu, not understanding that when the manager said "move" they actually meant "copy". Has an "oh shit" moment on seeing that the folders have now all gone from the customer drive. Tries to drag them back; this time chooses "Create Shortcuts Here" in a state of fluster, knowing only that "Move Here" was somehow wrong. Failing to perceive the difference between the Windows icon for a shortcut to a folder and the Windows icon for a folder, breathes sigh of relief in the belief that all is now well.
Hands you back your now thoroughly emptied USB stick.
Does anyone have a simple idiotproof guide to how to recover the files? If they can't be, that's fine; there's nothing absolutely irreplaceable on there.
Windows shortcut files are quite small, so if that's all that's been written to the USB stick since the original folders were deleted from it, there's a good chance that most of what used to be there has not been overwritten and is still quite recoverable. If you're not comfortable with Terminal, your best bet will be using something like Recoverit or ZAR in trial mode.
About the only real trap for new players with this class of tool is trying to recover lost files from a device that you haven't immediately stopped writing files to. So don't download recovery tools onto your damaged drive, and don't try to save any recovered files straight back onto it either. As long as you make sure your damaged device is only ever read, never written, recovery is usually fairly straighforward; though you might well lose folder structure and/or filenames.
And I'm glad there's nothing totally irreplaceable on that stick. At least you haven't had to find out the hard way why it's a good idea only ever to hand over a USB stick to somebody else if everything on it is trivially replaceable.
posted by flabdablet at 4:29 AM on October 5, 2020 [6 favorites]
Replacing all files with shortcuts is often an early sign of infection by Cryptolocker ransomware, so you should give that print shop a heads up about what is happening.
posted by Lanark at 8:14 AM on October 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Lanark at 8:14 AM on October 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
If I remember right, lnk files are in actuality text files.
Sorry, you don't remember right. You might be thinking of the first implementation of Unix symlinks.
posted by flabdablet at 11:58 AM on October 5, 2020
Sorry, you don't remember right. You might be thinking of the first implementation of Unix symlinks.
posted by flabdablet at 11:58 AM on October 5, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:28 PM on October 4, 2020 [2 favorites]