Problem accessing folders in an ntfs partition (external USB HDD)

[SardusX86]

Hi All,
Recently I noticed that some folders are not visible (while all the others are visible) on an external USB HDD (ntfs formatted) from macOS High Sierra and Sierra.

Via Windows 10 or Linux all the folders in the same HHD are visible.
Can it depend on the use of characters or symbols not allowed ? Which? (for example: folders like "Alghero - PPR" and "Use of the Soil 1: 25K 2008 - R.A.S." can not be seen)
How can I solve this problem?
Thanks in advance for Your help

[smolderas]

I'm not sure, if you have the same "issue", but if you copy over a SMB shared filesystem (nsfs), samba implementation of macOS tends to set the hide flag. So after you initially copy something over, you need to remove the hidden flag:

chflags nohidden /some/copied/file

[SardusX86]

Thanks for the reply,
I do not know if I understand well what you suggest but the folders have not been copied or created by mac in the ntfs partition. They were created under linux (I'm working in a multiboot system) and I would like to be able to access them from macOS.
could the solution you suggest be equally useful?

[smolderas]

Probably. The folder or files should be there in macOS too. Try to list them in terminal via:

ls -la /your/hidden/folder

If you see your files, then you should remove the hidden flag via the command I've posted earlier.

[SardusX86]

This is the 'ls -la' output in macOS Sierra:

Andreas-iMac:~ andrea$ ls -la /Volumes/My\ Passport/Andrea/GIS/Elaborazioni
total 780464
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096  5 Feb 17:18 .
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096 24 Feb  2016 ..
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096  8 Feb 17:47 Alghero - PPR1
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096 18 Dic  2014 DBG_REGIONE_TOSCANA_NOVEMBRE_2014
-rwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff  399595143 23 Dic  2014 DBG_REGIONE_TOSCANA_NOVEMBRE_2014_2fd80d7e2f78311eab0607c066e33ea8.7z
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff      49152 25 Mar  2015 DBMP RAS Strato 01
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff      90112 29 Mar  2015 DBMP RAS Strato 02
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096 30 Mar  2015 DBMP RAS Strato 03
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff      28672 30 Mar  2015 DBMP RAS Strato 04
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       8192 20 Feb  2015 DBMP RAS Strato 05
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff      12288 31 Mar  2015 DBMP RAS Strato 06
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096  2 Apr  2015 DBT10K_052_SIENA_2010_2010
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096 21 Feb  2015 DBT2K_048017_FIRENZE_2011_2011
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff          0  5 Dic  2015 GRASS6XDB
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff          0  4 Feb  2015 GRASS70DB
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff       4096  3 Feb  2015 PPTR Puglia
drwxr-xr-x  1 andrea  staff          0  2 Feb  2015 QGISDB

and this is the 'ls' output of the same folder in Linux Mint 18.1

andrea@andrea-System-Product-Name ~ $ ls '/media/andrea/My Passport/Andrea/GIS/Elaborazioni'
Alghero - PPR
Alghero - PPR1
DBG_REGIONE_TOSCANA_NOVEMBRE_2014
DBG_REGIONE_TOSCANA_NOVEMBRE_2014_2fd80d7e2f78311eab0607c066e33ea8.7z
DBMP RAS Strato 01
DBMP RAS Strato 02
DBMP RAS Strato 03
DBMP RAS Strato 04
DBMP RAS Strato 05
DBMP RAS Strato 06
DBT10K_052_SIENA_2010_2010
DBT2K_048017_FIRENZE_2011_2011
GRASS6XDB
GRASS70DB
PPTR Puglia
QGISDB

as you can see the folder 'Alghero - PPR' can not be seen in the macOS terminal output.

What could be the problem?

[SardusX86]

update:
the problem was due to the fact that folders and files created using linux on the partition ntfs (and on linux visible and accessible) had names containing special characters not compatible with windows (in which they are visible but not accessible) and macOS (on which they were not visible ).
I solved by renaming folders by deleting special characters incompatible with Windows ('.' dot at the end of the folder name and ':' colon) and macOS (':' colon).