Apple: Improper unmounting can cause disappearance of files in Mac OS X 10.4.x

Apple has posted a Knowledge Base article indicating that improper unmounting (e.g. simply disconnecting an external drive without dragging its icon to the Trash or pressing the eject button in the Mac OS X Finder) of volumes can cause the disappearance of data copied to said volume when it is reconnected.

Knowledge Base article #305396 states:

"For example, if you disconnect an external FireWire-based hard disk from your computer without first unmounting the volume in the Finder or Disk Utility, this issue may occur."

The solution, of course, is to properly unmount the drive. However, if the problem has already occurred, Apple recommends using the Repair Disk function in Disk Utility (located in /Applications/Utilities) on the problematic volume before reuse.

Apple adds

"This can happen if the disk cache is not emptied ("flushed") due to an improper unmount of the destination volume."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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