Hey, all... this almost seems like "user error" (and I definitely haven't ruled that out! But the problem appears to hit many of them, most of whom are computer-competent, neither n00b nor clueless.); it MIGHT be something else. There is a group -- a department of 6-8 users -- which is repeatedly experiencing "files missing" and "folders missing" issues... They estimate maybe 10 or so instances of this problem over the past 6ish months. Other same-sized groups, accessing the same network-share, do not report this problem.

The server runs MS-Win2KserverSP4. The network share is large, many files & sub-folders, many layers deep. RAID5. No disk-errors in system log (yes, the log goes back that far & more), so I'm disinclined to think it's disk-errors.

Some of the end-users are on Win2KproSP4, a few Mac OS X, a few WinXPproSP2 (no Vista... yet); a couple have Mac laptop's and Windows desktop's (no Linux/SAMBA/NFS/etc). The System Log *does* report MACSRV event-id 12061's, but those are obvious as disconnect-from-server events, and users know they may loose an active file if they get disconnected that way... This problem manifests as something else: files (or whole folders) gone from the still-active connection to the server. I don't THINK the "event-id 12061"'s are related to this issue (although, as a separate issue, I'd like to resolve THOSE, too... I'm gonna try a "net config server /autodisconnect:800" next, I think...) Also, I can't limit it to (the users' don't report it as limited to) files recently-written by the Mac's.

What makes this group different are:

- They're the only Mac users (except for one lone executive, who may simply not generate enough traffic to see the intermittent error)

- They *MAY* have some software-tools that others don't use, or that others use radically-less.

- They're the "most-active" on this server; because of the document-heavy nature of their work, they are constantly opening and closing doc's of all types.

I'm honestly puzzled. In many regards, it looks like a classic file-and-forget case of pebkac; but it's just a few too many users, a few too many instances of the same problem, for me to be happy with that diagnosis.

Oh, and my wife is one of the users experiencing the problem! So, aside from the whole issue of making-the-spouse-happy, I can report that we do NOT see this problem at home (eliminating at least one case of "user error").

One thought has occurred to me: when does it (or does it ever) happen that drag-n-drop file operations are CUT&paste rather than COPY&paste?

Other thoughts most welcome!


- Steve