I am having trouble opening files from a USB.
Over time, the size of the file(s) have grown considerably - considering I work off of my MacBook, I have started running out of storage space.
So I thought it would be a good idea to start moving files to my portable storage drive and access them from there. However, I am presented with an error ’ /Volumes/KNOWLEDGE/WHB2.3dm is not a Rhino m_archive ’
When I open the file is empty despite it saying that it is 1.12GB in finder.
Has anyone ran into similar issues?
Is there something I need to do in order to enable the access of files from my usb.
Thanks
Dylan
Well, I don’t have a solution to your problem other than to try running rescue3dm from inside a new instance of Rhino and seeing if you can recover anything.
It is a VERY bad idea to keep your only copy of a critical file on a USB drive. They are notorious for failing. An external SSD is a much better option. Getting a bigger or second internal SSD is even better, but on Mac that may be difficult.
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Luckily I have enough foresight to not keep the only copy on a usb!
I have kept a copy on my internal drive until I knew I could open files from my USB.
I do have an external SSD that I can put files onto but, I can’t see how this would prevent the above error, appreciate your response nonetheless.
D
It might not - especially as we do seem to have occasional reports with the same error on MacRhino files, even stored on internal drives…
Are you inferring that the issue may be due to Mac weirdness?
I also run rhino on Windows via bootcamp. However the work I am currently doing doesn’t require me to use windows for the full suite of plugins etc. But may be worth knowing if this issue doesn’t really happen on windows?
@Helvetosaur is spot on.
A USB jump drive should NEVER be used as a working drive! It is a handy device for shuttling files from on device to another, aka “SneakerNet”, using Windows file Explorer or Mac Finder.
Copy the working file to your local drive, do your work, save it, and copy it back to the jump drive.
You use a jump drive in any other way at great risk and peril.
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I’ve heard that’s Mac’s write-caching had at some point anyway NOT been overly concerned about if your files ever actually get saved to disk. We’re talking about seconds here, but if just the wrong thing happens at the wrong time…
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Hard to know. We have also seen files get corrupted under Windows. I don’t have a gauge as to the frequency of this happening on one platform or the other. Not very often in any case, and I don’t know if it’s more likely to happen on Mac or Windows (per installed user base).
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So what you’re saying here is that it would be okay to store files on an external drive, but to continue to work from them they need to be copied/moved from the drive onto the local drive?
But I shouldn’t attempt to actually open the files directly from the external drive?
Sorry if this sounds like what you have just explained but I want to make sure I understand what you mean.
Thanks
D
Well, let’s look at just one scenario - if you have a rather large file and are saving it to your USB drive - if you think it’s done saving, but it’s not and you yank out the drive, your file is probably corrupted. Since you can’t (easily) yank out an internal drive, this much less likely to happen… 
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I’d say no like helvetosaur, as I had the same issue once or twice but with a file on a SSD on my windows system. it finally turned out that my SSD was about to die (with increasing number of faulty segments). I remember not having repaired the file in question and it was just lost.
This problem repeats every two years or so with the EVO SSD series and I replace my SSD’s every 2-3 years to avoid losing all my clients data…
However, as it has been said before in this thread, you should never use a USB stick directly to work on files. Flash tech is just fast, but not as reliable as the old HD’s from my experience (except for WD external ones, they are just absolute garbage!!!)
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Yeah I understand this.
Initially, I tried saving the file without realising that my internal drive was out of space - causing a corrupted file. Prompting the attempt to work off of an external drive.
John Brocks ‘sneakernet’ solution seems to be the only way forwards