What happens to transfers when you restart

Quitting Storage Studio, restarting your Mac or unplugging your drive doesn't lose your transfers. The list, the settings and the schedules are all kept, and a transfer that was interrupted can carry on — sending only what hadn't arrived yet, not starting from scratch.

When Storage Studio quits or the Mac restarts

Storage Studio stops any transfer that is running when it quits, so nothing carries on unseen in the background. When it opens again:

• A transfer that was Running comes back as Queued.
• A Paused transfer is still paused, waiting for you to click Resume.
• Scheduled transfers carry on. A run that fell due while Storage Studio wasn't open happens once, soon after it starts — see Scheduling a transfer.

A Queued transfer starts when the queue next moves on — for example when you start or resume another transfer, a scheduled run comes due, or your drive is connected. If one stays Queued and you want it now, select it, click Cancel, then Run again. Either way, the files that had already finished aren't sent again: each run compares both sides and sends only what's missing or changed. See Sync again and Run again.

%% caption: What a transfer does after an interruption
flowchart TD
  A[A transfer is interrupted] --> B{What interrupted it?}
  B -->|Storage Studio quit or the Mac restarted| C[Back as Queued on the next launch]
  B -->|You clicked Pause| D[Stays Paused until you click Resume]
  B -->|The drive was unplugged| E[Waiting for drive until it's back]
  C --> F[The next run sends only what's missing]
  D --> F
  E --> F

When the Mac sleeps

Storage Studio doesn't keep your Mac awake for a transfer. When the Mac sleeps, the transfer stops moving; when it wakes, a transfer to or from a cloud account retries what was interrupted. If it ends with Failed, use Sync again or Run again — only what didn't arrive is sent. (Backups are different: Data Backup can keep the Mac awake while it runs; see Backup speed, battery and the network.)

When your drive is unplugged

A transfer that reads from or writes to your Storage Studio external drive checks the drive first. If it isn't connected — when the transfer starts, or when a scheduled run comes due — the transfer waits as Waiting for drive instead of failing.

• It starts by itself as soon as the drive is plugged back in.
• Check drive in its details looks again straight away.
• Abandon pending in the toolbar cancels every transfer that is waiting for the drive.
• A scheduled transfer doesn't pile up extra runs while it waits.

Storage Studio checks that the drive is really connected, not just that a folder with its name exists, so a waiting transfer never copies onto your Mac's built-in disk by mistake. See when your drive is disconnected.

Very large downloads

A single large file — over about 2 GB — downloaded to this Mac from a source that supports it is fetched in pieces. If the download is paused or interrupted by a restart, the pieces that arrived are kept: when it carries on it checks them and fetches only the rest. Use Pause rather than Cancel if you mean to come back to it — a cancelled download isn't picked up again. If the disk fills up part-way, the transfer shows Needs space instead of failing; free some space and click Try again, or click Move to another drive to carry on from a drive with room, without downloading anything twice.

Your transfer history

The list of transfers is saved on your Mac. If a newer or older version of Storage Studio can't read some of it, the unreadable part is copied aside and kept rather than overwritten, and Job Insights tells you. See Background Activity and Job Insights.

See also: Data Transfers · The drive was unplugged during a move · A transfer failed