Please, help me recover files!

Decado · #1 July 23rd, 2005, 03:27 PM

i have been a mac user since 1985, but this is the most serious thing that has EVER happened. I have been working for three weeks on a big project that is supposed to be printed in a week.
fooling around in automator i must have, by accident, put my whole projec folder in the trash, and when i was emptying the trash (to get rid of a few textdocuments i just put there, i noticed that it started to delete over 680 items, so i quickly pressed Stop! but to late.
some very imported files were gone. i have not touched the computer since, just writing this post.

any terminal code or application i can use to get m files back before they are overwritten?

please, help me.

ElDiabloConCaca · #2 July 23rd, 2005, 05:46 PM

Stop using your computer immediately. The more you use it, the higher the chance that the files will be overwritten with new data, making recovery impossible... even during seemingly non-disk intensive tasks such as surfing the web, temporary files and system files are being read and written to the disk -- a bad thing if you're trying to recover recently deleted items.

Using another computer, download Data Rescue:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/1133

You can only recover a limited number of files with the trial version, then it's up to you to decide if the lost data is worth the software price.

I hope that helps!

Decado · #3 July 23rd, 2005, 06:04 PM

thanks!
didn't help, though.
Data Rescue was the first thing i tried, but i guess i was to late. Couldnt find anything. this job was suppossed to give me a lot of opportunities for other jobs (kind of like a big test from the employer to see if i could do it). feel almost naseaus now when i think of all nights i will have to sit up working now. this is my holiday.

i should have done the whole backup routine more often, but after 20 years of no problems i got lazy.

ElDiabloConCaca · #4 July 23rd, 2005, 06:06 PM

Yeah, I'm sorry to hear about that... I've been in similar situations where lack of a backup came back and bit me hard.

Did you do the "Thorough Scan" with Data Rescue? The quickscan rarely finds anything useful... the thorough scan takes quite a while but is pretty good at finding recently deleted items.

Decado · #5 July 23rd, 2005, 06:11 PM

yes, i first did the quickscan and then the Thorough. nada.
i didnt have access to another computer, so i couldnt shut this one down and do the scanning from there, and i guess maosx's constant usage of harddrivespace killed my chances.
doing a content scan now.
i used to have a shareware called Rubbish installed that could solve this kind of trouble, but i forgot to reinstall it after i installed tiger.