Logic X FILES problem when moving between drives

Hi,

Thank you for your amazing piece of software. I helps save me a lot of time, but I am still working out how things work exactly and think I have stumbled on a problem.

I created rules to back up and sort my Logic X projects on an external backup drive. When the files I want to sort are already in another folder on that backup drive Hazel moves them all correctly into the right folder, based on year.

However, when I create the same rules for a folder on my internal hard drive and want to have the Logic X (package) files moved to the same external drive folders something goes wrong. It copies the files, but it makes them a lot smaller in size so it leaves out a lot of the information that is in the .logicx files which are package files. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

I've lost some older projects now because not all of the content in the .logicx files was copied to the external drive and I deleted the originals before I noticed this...

I hope you can help out.

Thanks in advance,

Frank

Can you post the rules? Also, check the logs and email/post an excerpt referencing the files in question.

Also, can you be more specific about what gets copied over? Do all the files in the package get copied over but are smaller or are some files omitted altogether? Also, can you tell me more about this external drive? What filesystem is it formatted with?

Hi Mr. Noodle,

Thanks for replying.I'll add a screenshot of the rules https://ibb.co/wMcWxBc.
I have the same rule for every year until 2020.

I have to say that yesterday I tested this a couple of times with .logicx files again and it worked most of the time.

What seems to happen sometimes is that when large (mostly package) files (like logicx files or for instance zip files) are moved into the folder with the rules on, the file gets moved right away without waiting for it to be copied into the folder completely, therefor the file sometimes is empty or not complete. Does that make sense?

I'll do some more testing on my side, because I am a new user, so maybe I've done something wrong.

In this case in some logic files I was missing audio files (wavs). So the logicx file I was moving with the rules for instance was 6gb and after being moved to the other drive it was only 900MB. I had this a couple of times and couldn't figure out why.

The external drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) by the way.

Ok, there's definitely something going wrong, unless I am missing something completely.

I created a 'transfer' folder. Everything I drag into this folder get sorted and moved to the right folders on the external drive.

I just dragged a 513,6 MB sized Logicx file into this transfer folder and I got the notification it was moved to the external drive.

There were 2 problems:

1. It was moved to the wrong folder. I sort on year based on "Date Last Modified" (If Extension is Logicx and Date Last Modified is after specific date 31/12/2017 and Date Last Modified is before specific date 1/1/2019 Move to folder 2018 ). The file info says date last modified is 2018 and it still moved to the 2020 folder. I double checked the rules for both 2018 and 2020 and they seem fine.

2. The original file is 513,6 MB and after moving to the external disk it is 433,5 MB and it won't open...

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi, I did another test,

I applied the same rules to the root Logic folder on the backup drive (which has all the subfolders based on year) and before I dragged the logic file in there I copied it to the external drive first (just to the root) and THEN I dragged it into the logic folder with the rules on it (so from within the hard drive) and then it did work without problems, so it was moved to the 2018 folder instead of the 2020 and the file was complete and working.

Weeeeirdness

BTW, you don't need a separate rule for each year. Get rid of the "Date last modified" conditions. Then in your actions, move it to the folder containing all the year folders. Use "Sort into subfolder" and drag in "Date last modified". From there you can edit the format of the date to only use the year.

As for your problem, it might be the case that Hazel is moving the files while they are still being copied there. In that case you may need to add a delay. Something like "Date last modified is not in the last X minutes" (you'll have to tweak the time needed).

Hi Mr. Noodle, thank you for the reply. I'll try your suggestions and let you know if it works!

Thank you!

First problem (forgive me for being a noob): how do you do "From there you can edit the format of the date to only use the year."

I don't understand how to delay you are suggesting works. Could you explain a bit?

I think you are right when you say the file gets moved before it is copied entirely.

I did find a workaround and use the SYNC option and then have the folder remove items that are in the folder for more than an hour. That way it syncs to the target disk first. Is that solid?

In "Sort into subfolder", after you drag in the date attribute, click on it. There's a menu with additional options, including the option to edit the format.

The delay is to prevent Hazel from processing the file/package before it's finished being written out.

Thank you! I understand why the delay is, but I don't understand how to use the rule to put in a delay

I mentioned that in my previous post. If you add a condition like "Date last modified is not in the last X minutes", it will not match the file if it was modified in the last X minutes.