Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with recovery and apple

The Curious Case of the Missing iPhone Notes Content

Chipmazing — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:11:35 -0800

I often jot down bits, lines, concepts and even entire poems on my iPhone in the notes section, as I have found that my atrocious handwriting proves illegible if I try to transfer my fleeting, rare moments of inspiration with a old-fashion pen and paper. But recently, an entire section of one of the notes disappeared... I put hours of work into the piece in question (occasionally i prefer the iPhone keyboard to an actual physical one when trying to rapidly get phrases out of my head), but find myself unable to remember the EXACT phrasing of the lines that mysteriously disappeared. The rest of the note remains and no other notes have seen any effect like this. I (probably stupidly) re-synced with my computer to see if this would reverse this curse, but to no avail. I checked notes.mbox (I have an old black macbook running OSX 10.5.8) but all the saved copies look exactly like the one i have on my phone, missing the meat of the piece.

Is there any way or place to recover this note? I really don't want to lose this to the fickle gods of technology...

How to completely clear Apple Address Book in preparation for recovery?

odinsdream — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:22:22 -0800

Recovering Address Book data. Apple Address Book phantom entries keep returning, even after deleting the data files and prefs lists. Where are they coming from? How can I get the original data back? I'm trying to help someone recover their address book data after they upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard.

They started with around 200 address cards. After the Snow Leopard upgrade they have 20. These 20 don't seem to have anything in common with eachother.

Several online resources indicate that I could use the file:

~\Library\Application Support\Address Book\AddressBook.data.previous

...by deleting the AddressBook.data file, and renaming the above to sit in its place. I've sifted through the AddressBook.data.previous file with an editor. It's 1.9 MB, and appears to contain all of her 200 cards.

I haven't been able to get the replacement working, though, because of this oddity:

1. Close Mail, Address Book, iCal.
2. Delete the entire ~\Library\Application Support\Address Book folder, and delete all of the ~\Library\Preferences\com.apple.addressbook* files.
3. Re-open Address Book.

Result: Those 20 cards are back. The Address Book comes up empty first, then these cards magically appear. The Application Support\Address Book folder now contains data related to these cards, where before it didn't even exist.

MobileMe sync is disabled. There is no other Sync option in the Address Book preferences Accounts area. Where are these cards coming from?

I have a feeling that if I solve this part, I could probably get the recovery working, but I'm stumped.

Help me catch the bastard who stole my Powerbook

unSane — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:33:27 -0800

How can I catch the villain who stole my laptop? On Friday I had a G4 Powerbook stolen. I would like to catch the thief, not so much for the laptop since I was going to replace it anyway, but because I don't like people who steal things.

It didn't have any IP-reporting software on it but it DID have Gmail notifier, iChat and iSync running, plus various other bits of software which phone home with some regularity.

Is there any way to leverage any of these so I can discover the IP it next connects from? What other steps can I take? (I am monitoring eBay and Craigslists in my vicinity).

(Of course any Mac-savvy thief will immediately reformat the drive but I think it was a total opportunist, and they probably have no install discs).

I did already change all my passwords and fortunately I was using Gmail so very little personal email was cached on the machine.

What's the best way to theft-proof a laptop and its data in future?

Any advice on reviving an iMac that stalls on bootup?

pzarquon — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:14:48 -0800

Any advice on reviving an iMac that stalls on bootup? I hit the knowledge base, chatted with a tech, ran various tests and tried the basic tricks, but still, no go. I'm not a Mac/OSX expert, but knew well enough to tap the Apple knowledge base (I reset the SMU, zapped PRAM, attempted a safe mode boot), chatted live with an Apple tech named Farida with a moderate grasp of English (we used the install disk to verify the disk, then run the extended hardware test, which took an hour, during which the tech abandoned me!), and I ultimately left my iMac "booting" overnight in the hopes that it'd eventually come through... but still, no go.

I have a 17" iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor). Basically, I get the startup chord, the Apple logo, then the spinning pinwheel... and that's it. The pinwheel spins and spins and spins, and nothing else. Nothing immediately preceded this problem... the iMac worked fine in the morning, I shut down, went to work, but when I came home, nothing.

Again, the basic tests/tools on the install disk seem to have found nothing. It's not a "forbidden symbol" or question mark or sad Mac... it just hangs at the Apple logo and pinwheel. (Hence the inability to boot in "safe mode," since I'd have to get past that step to see any indication that it took.) The tech suspected memory, since I upgraded from 1GB/512MB to 1GB/1GB a few weeks ago, but the iMac worked fine every day since then, until yesterday. I even went back to the original memory chips as part of my troubleshooting, with no change. And ultimately the memory passed the hardware test.

Any likely culprits? Corrupted OS, disk, or some unidentified hardware issue? Any advice? I'm guessing that my next step is pestering someone at the Genius Bar, but in case there are slightly more advanced tricks ("Hold down the command and 'V' key while reciting Vogon poetry!") I should try, I thought I'd tap the hive mind.

Mac OSX data recovery

Chunder — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 10:59:29 -0800

Does anyone know of a good undelete tool for Mac OS X (10.4.x) that can recover AVI files from an external (FAT32) drive? I've accidentally (obviously!) managed to delete a bundle of AVI movie files from my external data drive - prior to having it backed up, of course.
The deletion process was, in effect, a manual "move" of about 600 files from one location to another, one half at a time (due to space constraints) - an import into iTunes.

I didn't realise until I'd moved/deleted everything that the destination only included mpeg files, and that all the AVIs have become toast. Argh. Re-acquiring them is not an option, and although they're not essential to my continued existence on this planet they are something I'd like back.

Some potential issues spring to mind:
1) I suspect that there are only about 20-30 deleted files out of the 600 that are actually missing, but I have no way of finding out how many.
2) I don't know the filenames of any of them.
3) They're all in the region of 30-40 MB in size.

So far, I've had a go with FileSalvage - which although it decognises the disk, doesn't appear to do anything (I've left it scanning the 250GB drive for 48h with no further progress...)
Also, I tried Data Rescue II which scanned OK (for ages) - but when I got to the results I discovered that it wouldn't recover AVI files! Argh! (Still naively living in my Amiga bubble where the undelete program will show you everything that has been deleted and can be recovered, no questions about filetype compatibility!)
Additionally, I tried MediaRecover which contrary to my interpretation of the product description, only works for memory card type devices, not removable hard disks.
The final program I've tried is Virtual Lab - which occasionally seemed to cause a major system crash when it's run (although this may be a cruel coincidence), and in any case, does not appear to support a FAT32 formatted disk.

*sigh*

As far as I'm aware, nothing else has been written to, or removed from, the drive since the incident so my understanding is that they should all still be intact.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation, and found the perfect piece of software? I have no objection to buying something (providing the price seems reasonable) but professional data recovery services are out of the question.

There's been a couple of other similar questions, but nothing where software tools have been suggested - and, typically enough, the Apple discussion forums are currently unavailable (which they seem to be every single time I have a Mac problem and want to check there... they're probably fine for the other 99% of the time!)

Help me AskMefi - you're my only hope! ;-)

How do I locate the data files for Mac programs?

SeizeTheDay — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:08:51 -0800

I'm having trouble recovering my data from my external HDD after I used Carbon Cloner for Mac 10.4.3. I thought my Powerbook hard drive was dying so I purchased an external HDD and used Carbon Cloner to backup all my stuff. Trouble is, I reinstalled Tiger completely clean and now I'm having trouble finding the data files for my programs (Mail, Virtual PC, iBank). Where is my information hiding and how can I prevent this problem in the future? Thanks in advance.

Please recommend good, reliable, cheap Mac OS X data recovery software.

armoured-ant — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 05:59:17 -0800

Oh dear. Mac data recovery question. One of my coursemates accidentally deleted her final year degree coursework when trying to free up some disk space on her G4. [More Inside] She's been doing intensive work in Final Cut, so the files were mainly Quicktime format. We're looking at data recovery software, but I've only ever done this on a PC. Google pulled up Disk Warrior, but we're trying with BinaryBiz Virtual Lab. Does anyone have any experience of good, reliable (preferably cheap - we're students) Mac OS X data recovery software?