Restoring deleted files...

ian27 · #1 May 30th, 2005, 01:48 PM

Hi guys,

I've had a pretty major problem with the computer this weekend that has basically led to me losing a lot of data, included all of my emails, client details, accounts and speech recognition files. I have also had to re-install practically everything again, which has put me back days. And all this happened from following the advice of the AppleCare support team, so as you can probably imagine I am pretty furious about the whole thing.

Anyway, putting my feelings aside, is there any way that I can get back my old emails? I've done a search for any "mailboxes" folders but it only come up with the empty default stuff. All of this occurred following the completion of an archive-install. Is there anyway that I can try to get hold of the files which have been deleted?

Thanks in advance....

Ian

lombarke · #2 May 30th, 2005, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ian27

Hi guys,

I've had a pretty major problem with the computer this weekend that has basically led to me losing a lot of data, included all of my emails, client details, accounts and speech recognition files. I have also had to re-install practically everything again, which has put me back days. And all this happened from following the advice of the AppleCare support team, so as you can probably imagine I am pretty furious about the whole thing.

Anyway, putting my feelings aside, is there any way that I can get back my old emails? I've done a search for any "mailboxes" folders but it only come up with the empty default stuff. All of this occurred following the completion of an archive-install. Is there anyway that I can try to get hold of the files which have been deleted?

Thanks in advance....

Ian

when you do an archive-install, you should have a folder called "old system" or something. Perhaps your e-mails can be found in oldsystem/user/library/mail ?

ian27 · #3 May 30th, 2005, 02:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lombarke

when you do an archive-install, you should have a folder called "old system" or something. Perhaps your e-mails can be found in oldsystem/user/library/mail ?

Thank you for responding quickly. The archive-install created a folder called "Previous Systems", but this doesn't contain any of my mailboxers. Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks.

Mikuro · #4 May 30th, 2005, 03:48 PM

Are you using the same user you were using before, or did you create a new one in the archive-install process? Check your /Users folder, and see if there are any other folders there. Maybe all your old stuff is in there.

If your files are really gone (what happened exactly? I mean, what made you to perform a reinstallation to begin with?), then you can try to recover them with programs like Data Rescue, which has saved my butt on more than one occasion.

ian27 · #5 May 31st, 2005, 08:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikuro

Are you using the same user you were using before, or did you create a new one in the archive-install process? Check your /Users folder, and see if there are any other folders there. Maybe all your old stuff is in there.

If your files are really gone (what happened exactly? I mean, what made you to perform a reinstallation to begin with?), then you can try to recover them with programs like Data Rescue, which has saved my butt on more than one occasion.

Hi Mikuro, the road to me getting to this archive install is pretty lengthy so here goes:

I first contacted Applecare a number of weeks ago about a problem that was occurring whilst running any 3D software (mainly games). The machine would completely freeze within seconds, and I would be unable to 'force quit' therefore having to turn off the machine by the power switch. This problem was occurring from the first day that I received the machine and after working through various procedures given by one Applecare team members, it was suggested that I take the machine to an engineer to look at it.

I am disabled and as such I am unable to physically take the machine in for servicing, and so requested the engineer to come to my home. Unfortunately the engineer was unable to come out to service the computer at my home, so I phoned the support team to ask for details of another engineer.

Before issuing another engineer a member of the team asked me to do an archive install to see if this would repair the problem. I asked if I could lose any data from doing this and was told “no”. I completed the archive install, as instructed, but the problem was still occurring.

Then, after restarting the computer I could not even get the operating system to load, all I got was a bunch of code, error messages and freezing. So I called back Applecare and was issued to a second tier support team member. This gentleman told me that it was a problem with the logic board and the machine would remain inoperable despite any attempts to make it work again.

I use this machine daily for work and it was very worrying for me as I have constant deadlines to meet, and any period of inactivity could have devastating financial implications for me. Therefore, despite being told that there was "no possibility" of regaining any control of the machine, and being a fairly competent Mac user myself, I spent the next few hours trying to fix it and managed to get things moving a bit with some help from Alsofts Disk Warrior software. I was eventually able to get the operating system to run again from the drive and after some time even managed to get my desktop back.

However, one big problem was discovered - there was some data loss. So I had to re-install most of my major software packages again, but above all I lost all of my business e-mails, my business client details and all PayPal receipts for my accounts.

Furthermore, despite now having the operating system installed on two drives (the eMac internal drive and an additional external LaCie firewire drive), the 3D crashing problems still occur leaving the original problem still unresolved. I am told it could be a faulty graphics card, internal drive and/or logic board. Argh!

So the whole thing is fairly lengthy as you can see. I’ve used Macs for many years and have never had any problems like this before, but this machine has been problematic since the day I bought it, I just want them to take the damn thing away and change it now, I can’t be bothered with it any more. Grumble, grumble! Haha…

Thanks mate.

Ian