Moron doesn' back up files

February 18, 2006 9:24 PM

Crap! I just lost ten years of writing by accident.

No, it wasn't backed up. I'm a fucking moron. What happened was I accidentally renamed the documents folder while I was trying to rename another document (I was changing the extension to .xls). But, somehow, it renamed the documents folder. When I tried to rename it back to Documents, it wouldn't let me. It said, "You can't change the name of this" Which is fucked, because, it let me do it before.

Anyway, just now, my computer froze and I had to shut it off. When I turned it back on, the xls was gone and the DOCUMENTS folder was back and all my documents were gone. All of them. How do I recover them? Did my powerbook delete all those files just because it shut down? Help, I'm sick over this. I know, I should back up, I didn't. I have some the documents somewhere on various cds, but most of them I don't have backed up anywhere. What do I do?

posted by generic230 to computers & internet (34 comments total)

You want a copy of EasyRecovery Professional, and you want to avoid creating/copying/downloading new files for now.

If possible, install the program to ANOTHER HARD DRIVE so as to not potentially overwrite "deleted" (but not gone) space that may contain your documents.

Is this software cheap? No. It's $89 to download the "Lite" individual edition. It's $199 to download the standard edition, etc.

Do scroll past all the enterprise editions, though - those prices will scare the hell out of you.
posted by twiggy at 9:28 PM on February 18, 2006

First off don't do anything else...yet.

Second tell us what operating system.

Third give us you set-up (external firewire, internal raid, one hard drive, two different systems installed, just one, net boot etc.

Most likely your files are there your computer just forgot where. Don't panic and try to fix it until you get some expert advice which you won't get till you give some specifics.

My bet...you're OK
posted by leafwoman at 9:30 PM on February 18, 2006

Standard advice in this situation is to make a bit-by-bit copy of your hard drive to another drive so that if your recovery attempts wreck recoverable data, at least you can try again. Better not to do anything at all with the drive (including boot the machine) until you can do that.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 9:37 PM on February 18, 2006

Sorry, I was too busy freaking out before, It's a mac powerbook g4. OS 10.4

I have an internal hard drive. No external drive. I don't know what a raid is, or net boot. I'm not very computer literate. I'm afraid you're going to have to speak really slowly and maybe gesture with your hands, only the internet version of that.
posted by generic230 at 9:40 PM on February 18, 2006

Ah crap I see only now that you said "powerbook" ... I think easyrecovery is windows only. Sorry.

maybe this will help though?
posted by twiggy at 9:41 PM on February 18, 2006

Yes, your data is definitely not gone yet. I'm going to jump up and down and wave my arms and point at Zed Lopez's advice, then repeat it just so you do it FIRST. Make a bit-wise copy of all the data on your hard drive! This is not the same thing as 'copying' folders or even making a 'backup' of the disk, this is a very specific, low-level operation that will require special (but probably free) software to complete.

We can probably help you out, but I'm going to second the advice of turning this computer off and leaving it off until that piece of work is done.

(Disclaimer: You will probably not lose any data just turning your computer on and off and running it normally. If we're all correct, your data is still on the hard drive, but marked for deletion. This means if your computer tries to create new files it might eventually hit your 'marked for deletion' data. Your computer DOES create new temporary files every time it's turned on and during normal use but it's unlikely that it will immediately start clobbering your valuable writing)
posted by onalark at 9:44 PM on February 18, 2006

I am hundreds of miles away from my home. I'm in Mammoth Lakes, CA. I have nothing with me but my computer. What do I need to make a "bit by bit" copy? What do I need to buy? And, should I shut this off and wait until tomorrow when I can get to a computer store?
posted by generic230 at 9:50 PM on February 18, 2006

there are also some data recovery services on the internet, but they are not cheap...
posted by stilgar at 9:50 PM on February 18, 2006

also i third the idea of moth balling this comp until you get someone who is way more computer literate than you working on this project.
posted by stilgar at 9:51 PM on February 18, 2006

stilgar, I agree. I am not savvy enough to tackle this. There is a computer place here in Bishop, Ca, and I will go there tomorrow.
posted by generic230 at 9:54 PM on February 18, 2006

Alright, I know a thing or two about Powerbooks (I own a G4 running Panther 10.3 and I've been using it for the last 3 years).

It is possible that something very simple has gone awry. Perhaps you've renamed the Documents folder to something else in your home directory. Perhaps it's sitting in the Trash. It is worth checking out these two things if you have your computer booted up right now. If neither of these is the case...

The Apple Utility Disk Utility, which comes with OS X, has the ability to make a Full Disk Image of your Hard Drive. This is what you want to be able to take to a recovery specialist if all else fails. Unfortunately you will need a second hard drive with more free space than the size of your Powerbook's disk. You could buy one or borrow from a friend. An external Firewire/USB2 drive might be the way to go here.

Don't let anyone charge you more than the cost of the hard drive plus $100 to do the bit-wise copy. There's literally 5 minutes of work and just a lot of waiting involved in doing this.
posted by onalark at 9:54 PM on February 18, 2006

here is a short hand explanation of how your hard drive works. when you write a file you tell the hard drive here is where the file starts, here is where it ends. sort of like this (s for start f for finish)
S----data------F
when you "delete" something you tell the computer to get rid of the S and F tags so you end up with something like this
----data----
when you go to write a new file onto your computer your computer looks for the first batch of
----data----
that has no S or F tags then starts to plop down bits of data. this is why your hard drive can become fragmented and why you have to run defrag because you can have one file that is located all over the hard drive in all the "open" spaces that is data that has no S or F tags. So what you want to do is find that
----data----
that is still there but has not yet been written over. If you start making new files you run the risk of overwriting that data and losing your stuff. what you need to do is take your hard drive to a company that specializes in recovering lost data. they will go through and find all the chunks of
----data----
and put the S and F back on and presto you got your data back, however you surfing the net, and using your computer your browser is going to be downloading images from websites text etc so the more you use your hard drive the more risk you run of overrunning the data, so i would suggest you just turn your computer off, go to the library tomorrow, surf around till you find one of these companies, bit the bullet send them your comp and pay a lot of money, then make backups every month on cd/dvd/whatever.

hope this helps.
posted by stilgar at 9:57 PM on February 18, 2006

thank you. shutting down now.
posted by generic230 at 10:00 PM on February 18, 2006

CBL specializes in data recovery, and deal with all Mac OSs. 1.800.551.3917 (24 Hour Support).

Companies like this will require you to mail your HD from the computer to them, but this is what they specialize in and they can do it for you without the fear of your screwing it up.

Your other option is to try something like VirtualLab (one of many such products) which will find (free) and recover (pay) your lost data. More labor intensive, more nail biting, but ultimately cheaper, assuming it works.
posted by sophist at 10:07 PM on February 18, 2006

I am hundreds of miles away from my home. I'm in Mammoth Lakes, CA. I have nothing with me but my computer. ... There is a computer place here in Bishop, Ca, and I will go there tomorrow.

If it were me, I'd let this wait until I got home. Your data's not going anywhere. Rather than walk into a shop cold, I'd ask a few friends who they'd recommend — particularly since it's an Apple, because there tend to be quite a lot of expert Windows techies who know nothing about Apple but feel confident tinkering anyway since "it's supposed to be simpler." If you can't get a specific recommendation, find an Apple store or call AppleCare.

Good luck. You'll probably be fine — but try not to use the computer in the meantime, and learn your lesson. Back up your data.
posted by cribcage at 10:36 PM on February 18, 2006

First of all, stop using that computer. Turn it off and use another one untill you know exactly what you want to do. If the files are deleted, your data will still be on the drive, but not if other files get written on top of them.
posted by delmoi at 11:20 PM on February 18, 2006

(Disclaimer: You will probably not lose any data just turning your computer on and off and running it normally. If we're all correct, your data is still on the hard drive, but marked for deletion. This means if your computer tries to create new files it might eventually hit your 'marked for deletion' data. Your computer DOES create new temporary files every time it's turned on and during normal use but it's unlikely that it will immediately start clobbering your valuable writing)

Um, unless you get on that "internet" thing with a "web browser" that will localy cache every single file it loads...
posted by delmoi at 11:21 PM on February 18, 2006

The bitwise copy thing is quite easy using a unix command called 'dd'. But you're going to want someone who knows what they're doing to do this, and you're going to have to pay them ... probably some kind of 3 figure sum.

If it's just the text data you want from you're writing, and you don't mind it all appearing on one file , you could do something like (in Terminal.app:

strings /dev/disk0s3 > \
/Volumes/Some\ Disk/all-text-data-on-my-hard-drive.txt

after plugging in an external hard drive and replacing /Volumes/Some\ Disk with /Voumes/The_real_name_of_the_disk


then dealing with the all-text-data-on-my-hard-drive.txt file by hand.
But that will require a lot of post-hoc work.

Next time backup. Os X, containing the standard unix tools can already do most/all of this for you. "Unix isn't user-unfriendly, it's just picky about it's friends."
posted by singingfish at 12:10 AM on February 19, 2006

I'd just like to add that we don't even know that those files have been deleted, just that they're not visible in Finder. For all we know his operation got all those files renamed to something like:

.chapter1.txt

in which case they'd be visible and "recoverable" by just using Terminal. That said, I agree with others here that you should keep it shut until you find someone who knows what they're doing...
posted by vacapinta at 12:37 AM on February 19, 2006

Don't try it yourself if you don't know what to do exactly. I made this mistake, and I made it worse.

Find a professional. 10 years of writing is worth the cost. Good luck!!
posted by Quartermass at 8:27 AM on February 19, 2006

I managed to get most of my data from a failed HD with the previous version of Data Rescue II. You'll need either an external drive or another Mac in Target Disk Mode to boot and run it.

But if you're not confident, get a professional to do the recovery.
posted by holgate at 9:32 AM on February 19, 2006

I second DATA RESCUE. It's saved my bacon more than once.
posted by Wild_Eep at 10:03 AM on February 19, 2006

This is very simple.

A. You are not computer savvy
B. whatever we MeFites tell you, if it doesn't go well, may make your problem worse

So here is what you do:

1. turn off the computer
2. don't touch it
3. go to the most reputible shop in your area... make sure that they are good with Macs. You may even want to call Apple and get the nearest authorized dealer (few and farbetween, unless you're near an Apple store.)

Don't do any of the tech things that people are suggesting.

In my years of 1st line support on Macs and PCs I've seen that the more that people do in trying to fix the problem, the harder it is for a professional to fix it. (Remember poor Jeff and Karly who lost all photos from their child's first 6 months of life...)
posted by k8t at 10:07 AM on February 19, 2006

I agree, don't do anything; get someone else who knows what they're doing to fix your problem. It's not worth screwing around with this.
posted by grouse at 10:13 AM on February 19, 2006

And by don't do anything I mean turn the computer off and don't turn it back on until someone else has recovered your data.
posted by grouse at 10:14 AM on February 19, 2006

It's been fixed! I called my Los Angeles Mac guy, today. On a Sunday. Of a holiday weekend. He called right back. He has remote access to my computer and he found all my documents. Mac had just moved the renamed xls folder to another place. All the documents were there. Thank you all, so much. Your wise advice kept me from doing anything stupid. My files were all there, just as you said they would be.

This place rocks. I cannot express the depth of my appreciation at your calming abilities and useful information. Again, thank you.
posted by generic230 at 11:01 AM on February 19, 2006

Oh yeah, I wish I could make out with all of you all at once. And I'm now on my way to buy a usb drive so I can back up all my documents.
posted by generic230 at 11:03 AM on February 19, 2006

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:16 PM on February 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

Hooray! I had a similar lost files accident several months back and I know how horrible it can feel. Definitely go crazy with the redundant backups - burn your files to CD or DVD, copy them to an external drive, store them on your iPod, zip them up and upload them to your webspace. I felt a little anal while I was doing it, but I felt so much more secure after my scare knowing that I had multiple backups, just in case.
posted by brookedel at 4:55 PM on February 19, 2006

Put one of your backups in your car, or take it to the office with you, or whatever, so if your place catches on fire you'll still have the data. (You will need to keep it up-to-date, which is why I suggested the car, but that may not be the best thing if you park the car in an attached garage or something where it might go up in flame with the rest of the house.)
posted by kindall at 8:41 PM on February 19, 2006

good on you, its these little heart stoppers that make us better geeks.
posted by stilgar at 8:46 AM on February 20, 2006

Remember that your gmail account is also a good place to dump files for offsite backups. Unfortunately, gmail doesn't allow zip file attachments, but you can zip up several megs of documents, and then rename the zip file to pdf or something.

I was surprised to find that a friend of mine only had about 18M worth of files that were deemed irreplaceable. That's a pretty small, easy backup, sending the files in 5M chunks to a gmail account (after we copied to a thumb drive).

This isn't as practical if you have a bunch of large files, or tons of pictures, of course.
posted by glycolized at 2:03 PM on February 21, 2006

oh darn I was going to say to search for some of the file titles or content using spotlight and see if they had been relocated. that would have been a great answer. but I'm a little late to the party.

I'm so happy for you.
posted by visual mechanic at 7:46 PM on February 21, 2006

That was the worst story I've ever heard and then it became the best story I've ever heard. It's weird, but a total stranger's story about a computer problem almost gave me a panic attack.

And good move buying the USB drive. Fool me once...
posted by benrodian at 9:54 PM on February 21, 2006