Have you come across this error before in After Effects?

After Effects error: making file specification – no such volume (-35)

Yeah, it sucks.  Well, today was my first time experiencing this error.  I was opening an archived After Effects project, and as soon as it started to open I saw the error message.  I racked my brain trying to figure out why it was missing media because I was opening the project from a collected files folder.  I kept saying to myself,”This is what collected files is for…I shouldn’t be missing ANYTHING!”.  To top it all off, I had to continuously click the button as it tried to open the project because it was missing every single asset.  Finally it opened in After Effects and all assets were missing so I relinked everything and saved the project.  Fast forward 10 minutes later, AE crashed on me and I had to restart the program only to be welcomed by that annoying error message AGAIN!  So I got smart and googled the error message.

Well it turns out that the HFS file system on Mac has a 32 character limit on any Volume Name.  My external drive was exactly 32 characters.  I simply closed After Effects, renamed the external drive by shaving off a few characters of the Volume Name and TADA…Everything was fine!

So lesson of the day: Don’t make your Volume Names longer than 32 characters!