Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with recover

Give me my Money!

asuprenant — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:56:47 -0800

How to recover/break MS Money password? Hi, I just migrated to a new computer and am bringing over a backup from Microsoft Money (2002 or 2005).

I backed up the account to a .mny backup file, but when I try to open the file on my new computer, I'm asked for a password, which I don't remember setting (or ever being asked for) on my old computer, and none of my standard passwords seem to work. Gargh.

To complicate issues slightly, I'm traveling this week and don't have access to my old computer, just my .mny file and new Money installation.

So - any way to break/workaround the Money password? I've seen a lot of purported services online, but they seem pretty shady. Thanks!

I need to run chkdsk on my brain...

Salvor Hardin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:35:01 -0800

My mind is blown, it's not my own, where did my idea go? I'm feeling fine, but I've lost my mind! Help? Three days ago, while walking somewhere, I came up with a cool idea. A really cool idea. I mean, an astoundingly awesome idea.

And now I can't remember what it is.

Do you have any tips for recovering memories like this? I was distracted by something immediately after getting the idea, and I guess it didn't get stored into permanent memory in my brain.

It probably wasn't as incredibly brilliant as I am remembering, but it's been persistently bugging me that I've forgotten what it is. I really don't remember anything about it, except that I was excited about it. This has happened before, but it's never been so frustrating for so long! It feels like a big pothole in my mind.

So, mefites, do you have any tips, tricks, mindhacks, etc, for remembering stuff like this? Should I stare at a candle cross-eyed while huffing ginkgo-biloba vapour? Hang upside down blindfolded and think about it as hard as possible? I've tried NOT thinking about it, but it hasn't worked, and it keeps coming back to haunt me. Have you found anything that works for this? I don't even know if there's anything that can help, but I'm open to suggestions. Thanks!

iPod Touch Recovery

Kiwi — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:31:34 -0800

How to recover videos from an iPod Touch? My video files were kept on an external HD, which has now bitten the dust. Does anyone have any experience with getting the videos back off the iPod and onto my PC?

This can't be happening..

Zé Pequeno — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:58:54 -0800

Something terrible has happened! I'm using Mac OS Leopard and had backed up my photos onto my 500gb external hard drive in order to format the computer. Everything was fine and my iPhoto library, all 3.4gb of it, was on the drive and then... a disaster. Please help! With a fresh install of Leopard and the external drive connected and copying my music into iTunes, I opened iPhoto. That's all I did. Unfortunately, when I clicked on the folder 'Photos' on my external drive to restore my library which I had backed up the previous night, I discovered that just a moment prior to that (obviously when I'd opened iPhoto) it had been overwritten and now there was just 46mb of data there.... 46mb of nothing! Clearly the 46mb of nothing that inhabited the new install of iPhoto.

Jesus, noo! I don't believe this is happening to me.

So, am I completely screwed? The external drive is formatted to FAT32 if I recall correctly. How can I get it back?

Obviously I've disconnected the hard drive asap.

Please Metafilter.. Help me.

Recover a deleted Google map

Who_Am_I — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:00:00 -0800

How do I recover a deleted Google map? I accidentally deleted a map that I made in Google Maps. How do I get it back? It's still cached somehow because I went back to it using my browser history, but if I go to Google maps in another tab it's not there anymore. I have a tab sitting here looking at the map, but I have to leave work in about half an hour! Help!

Password emergency / mystery with Filemaker

lorimer — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:26:24 -0800

Password emergency / mystery. I'm a new Filemaker user and I've somehow set a password that's keeping me from accessing the file I just put two days of work (and some not easily replaceable data) into. I'm running Filemaker Pro Advanced 8.5v1 on an Intel Mac (OS 10.4.8).

I installed and started learning Filemaker on Friday. I was playing around with all the settings and options, and one is password-protecting a file. Since I was only experimenting with making my first file, and since I (wrongly??) thought I was setting a file-level rather than application-level password, I put in a throwaway password which I now do not remember and have no record of. The next time I tried to open this file it prompted me for the password, I tried a few times but couldn't remember it, and I gave up and created a new file.

This second file DID open repeatedly without a password during the same session of the application (i.e. app had not been restarted since creation of this second file, but file closed and opened freely). Unfortunately this session didn't shut down properly because of an unrelated issue (buggy unrelated app -- which I must use -- that occasionally makes my system stop responding and need to be manually shut down by holding the power button).

After I restarted the computer and Filemaker, my attempt to open this second file gave me the same password prompt. I'm 100% positive I didn't set a file-level password for this second file. This second file was made from scratch, not from a template and not a copy of the first file.

I tried creating a third file -- doing nothing but defining a few fields and one record, saving the file, and restarting the app. This third file DOES OPEN without a password -- implying this is not an app-level password issue.

During all of this I've been logged in as an Administrator-level user. The username in the password prompt is my Administrator username (but my system-level Administrator password is definitely not the password Filemaker wants). The option to log in as "guest" is greyed out.

I've Googled and the only Filemaker password reset or recovery utilities I can find are for Windows. Filemaker's Help says nothing about removing a password.

Please tell me there's some way to open my second file. I unfortunately put a LOT of work into it over the weekend, both data entry & careful layout/formatting. I dutifully made running backups of it... which are of course as unopenable as the original. Trying to open the file in a plain text editor gives me nothing usable (just strings of random-seeming characters).

I'm ready to entirely uninstall and reinstall Filemaker if it will help, but I can only assume these first two files have some metadata that says "no copy of Filemaker can open me without this password." If I were the company, I would've put in many safeguards to prevent me from doing what I'm trying to do now...

How do I recover my Entourage Calendar?

ruwan — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:01:52 -0800

How do I recover my Entourage Calendar? -- While importing my Entourage calendar into iCal, my MacBook Pro froze up, and I had to Force Quit both programs. When I restarted Entourage, my entire calendar (appointments, dates, events) was completely blank. Any geniuses out there who can help me recover it?

Microsoft Word File Recovery

Packy_1962 — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 20:15:01 -0800

Is there anyway to recover a file that's never been saved (except maybe by autosave) in Microsoft word after you accidentally hit "don't save changes" upon closing it?

Recover files from a memory stick?

djgh — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 05:18:28 -0800

"Could not read boot block". Trying to get my photos from a (Sony) Memory Stick, and apparently my Mac cannot read the disk. Disk utility reports that it can't read the boot block (input/output error), so I can neither verify or repair. What can I do?

Mac recovery

joshuak — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:45:52 -0800

Help me recover a file on my mac! I just need ONE little powerpoint because I saved it on a flash drive, made changes, then deleted it like an idiot. I've looked at previous threads but Norton Utilities has been discontinued and I don't have time to order it from ebay or whatever!

Damn RAID-0 Array

SweetJesus — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:26:02 -0800

My RAID-0 died, can I get the data back? I had an IDE cable and port shit the bed on my PC this morning. Cable fell apart, and I ended up having to pick it out with a pair of pliers from the motherboard. So now the first IDE controller doesn't seem work, and doesn't recognize any drives. When I moved it to the second port, it was recognized as RAID array 0, and seemed ok. But, changing the IDE port caused my GigaRaid controller to freak out and demand that my RAID set-up be redefined. I did that, but didn't clear the boot sector on it for fear of blowing up the data. I booted into Windows, and XP reports it as a big 467gb unpartitioned drive.

So I've replaced the IDE cable, the controller is working ok, and both drives haven't beeen touched since the cable died and I powered the machine off. Is there any way I can get the data contained on the drives back? Is this just a partition problem? Some data recovery software I've run told me I've got Unexpected MFT Records, which seems to be a RAID issue.

Recover my address book?

mullacc — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 17:33:42 -0800

OhNoesFilter: Is it possible to recover the address book that was lost in an ill-fated sync attempt between my Mac and my Motorola phone? iBook running Tiger and a Motorola RAZR w/ Bluetooth. My first sync started to hang and I ended up restarting the computer. I didn't think to check the phone or address book when I restarted. I must've sync'd an empty address book to the phone or vice versa. Anyone have ideas about a possible recovery? I assume this is more likely on the Mac than the phone, but either way would be excellent. And while I recently backed up my music on an external HDD, I didn't get around to backing up the rest of my data.

How can I recover data from a mangled hard drive?

waldo — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:19:58 -0800

The hard drive on my fiancee's Windows machine has died, with our wedding plans, five weeks prior to our wedding. I've managed to duplicate the drive (with Unix's dd), though not without errors severe enough to prevent me from booting it. Now what? I know nothing of Windows (I'm a Mac and Linux guy). The drive began to physically fail, with the first signs being system instability, followed by an inability to boot. At that point, with the drive making some nasty clicking noises the SMART status indicating that it was "failing," I slid the dying 40GB drive and a newly-bought 40GB drive into my Mac, booted it in single-user mode and ran dd if=/disk0 of=/disk1 bs=20m conv=noerror. Eight hours later, I had a duplicate drive and hundreds of screens of reports of errors.

When I paw through the data on the duplicate drive, using strings right on hdb, I can locate any textual information that I try to track down. Based on that, I conclude that substantial portions of the data are intact. But the drive won't mount on my Mac or in Linux, reporting various errors.

Should I run dd again with different settings (such as a smaller blocksize)? Is there a Windows program created for the purpose of rebuilding mangled FATs and turning data into files again? (Or, better yet, a Linux or Mac program?) Surely others have faced this problem before.

recover Hard Drive Data

matthelm — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 14:37:13 -0800

Can someone suggest a cheap and reliable place to recover data off my hard drive? I crushed a pin(IDE) in the 40-pin area and it broke off from the circuit board. AND for some reason my drive doesn't even spin when its plugged into the power source. This was a fine drive, only a couple of months old, until this day when the pin got crushed.....any help will dooooo! it is a hitachi 200 gb model and I talked to one place that quoted a $850 fee if it can't be fixed. The one thing that concerns me the most is that the drive doesn't spin anymore...for this could be serious...

Incompatible hard disk interfaces

mss — Sun, 05 Sep 2004 06:51:57 -0800

My laptop died and I'm trying to get stuff off the HD by slaving it into one of my desktop machines. The problem is the pin pattern is a smaller form factor. The drive is a Hitachi DK23EA interface ATA-5 (Enhanced IDE). Both of the machines I’ve tried have ATA-100 drives. I’ve removed the quick connect connector from the laptop drive to expose the pins. The pin pattern is the same as the connectors in the desk top but are a smaller footprint. (both narrower and shorter) Do I need some kind of jumper connector or cable, or am I trying to do something that for some unknown rule can’t be done?