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harris1966
Inspiring
July 2, 2018
Answered

Strange consequence of hard drive crash - Illustrator files changed to .fs

  • July 2, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 468 views

I'm helping a friend restore his iMac desktop following a hard drive crash. All of his business files that he created in Illustrator 10 were saved to DropBox. When I downloaded DB and synced to his new drive, ALL of his .ai files now have the .fs extension.

He's running Sierra 10.13.5 and the designation shows "File System Plugin." I changed the extension to .ai and tried to open in Illustrator but received the "Illustrator not able to open this file" message.

I cannot find any forum posts with this problem. Any insight would be appreciated. He has thousands of files that must be restored to Illustrator compatibility.

Thank you.

RW Harris

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Mylenium

    You probably need to find a dedicated file restoration tool. Since Macs differentiate between the actual data and file system metadata and store the info in separate forks, one doesn't mean much without the other. Presumably those bits you see are just the metadata while the actual binary data is hidden and has "disconnected", so the operating system cannot read the data streams. I'm not a Mac guy, but I believ you might also be able to restore files by checking the "Versions" in the file info panel and going back to an older one, if your drives are formatted with the latest HFS+/ AFS file systems, which most current Macs should.

    Mylenium

    1 reply

    Mylenium
    MyleniumCorrect answer
    Legend
    July 2, 2018

    You probably need to find a dedicated file restoration tool. Since Macs differentiate between the actual data and file system metadata and store the info in separate forks, one doesn't mean much without the other. Presumably those bits you see are just the metadata while the actual binary data is hidden and has "disconnected", so the operating system cannot read the data streams. I'm not a Mac guy, but I believ you might also be able to restore files by checking the "Versions" in the file info panel and going back to an older one, if your drives are formatted with the latest HFS+/ AFS file systems, which most current Macs should.

    Mylenium

      H
      harris1966Author
      Inspiring
      July 2, 2018

      Thanks Mylenium.

      Interestingly enough, we downloaded a trial version of SignLab 10 (my friend actually used SignLab years ago) and "Imported" some of the .ai files that have been changed to .fs. It opened it perfectly and allowed us to save in the newest version of Illustrator.

      However - the biggest drawback is that SignLab 10 is $500! While this is certainly a fix, I would still like Adobe or DropBox or someone to explain how 20 years worth and thousands of Illustrator files could have the extension changed from .ai to .fs. It makes no sense.

      I truly appreciate your help. I hope that marking your answer as "Correct" wins you some forum points. :-)

      Have a blessed holiday week.

      Monika Gause
      Community Expert
      Monika GauseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 2, 2018

      I haven't seen any Dropbox people posting in this forum, so if you want to reach them, you should definitely post to their forums.

      Have you tried instead of synching to just download the files from Dropbox via a web browser?

      Also: have you tried to copy the Illustrator files to a folder that is not synched and open them from there?

      Also it might be interesting to ask in Apple forums if there are any known issues with Dropbox synching - High Sierra has a couple of issues and that might just be one of them.

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