File Moving Bug in Leopard (and Tiger?)

[divigation]

It is making the rounds on Apple and tech sites yesterday and today, so most of you have probably heard, but in case you hadn't it is a good thing to know. There is apparently a now well documented bug in Leopard (some reports have it going back to Tiger and Panther as well) where in moving a file between volumes can destroy the file. The way it works is if you move a file between volumes and the writing fails on the volume, OS X is still destroy the original as if the move was successful. The fix is simple, don't command-drag files to other files. Standard drag to another volume copies and you don't lose the original. Like I said, most of you probably read about it, but wanted to be a good citizen and point it out to anyone who may not have seen it as data loss is a nasty thing.

[houltmac]

I can never remember the shortcuts like that anyway; I don't know why (being a keyboard kinda guy), but it always seemed very OS9 to me. Maybe I'm weird. I have always copied, pasted (or dragged) and then deleted as a precaution on every OS since I started using computers anyway. Lucky huh?

[Yuiichi]

I'm the same as houltmac - I've always done the standard drag and deleted the original. I feel sorry for those who have lost data though. Not a good feeling at all.

[divigation]

Yeah, I always copy, check the copy, move the original to the trash and empty the trash only after I check the copy again. But I am paranoid and convinced that I am going to lose data all the time. So I have never gotten into the habit of moving files instead of copying them, but now I have an excuse for it beyond paranoia, just avoiding data loss though a bug...

[mdmunoz]

This bug has been around since Panther.

Mac Rumors: Mac Data Loss Vulnerabilities Discovered

[llamame]

I read a post on MacRumors today about the developers' seed of 10.5.1 and it said some kind of file transfer bug was fixed. Is this it?

[Yuiichi]

@llamame - yes, that is probably it.