Trouble in Paradise

G

Gigamux

Registered
Got a real strange problem between my G4 TiBook and my G4 Tower. Just got back from a nine day vacation to Germany - Switz - N. Italy. Took lots digital pix. Used the TiBook to store them at the end of everyday while on our trip. So I get back and between me, my wife and my daugter; we had over 2 gigs of pix. So I decided not to copy them all from the TiBook to the Desktop. I put the TiBook in target disk mode and used it to organize the pix via the G4 Tower. I thought I would use Photoshop Elem. to batch process them from their large resolutions down to screen size and save the new skinny files in a folder called Slides. I kept the orig. I wanted to make a slide show that used copies of the pix and organize it as I wanted. I started out doing this everymorning for two days. No problems. Then this morning I went to open up the next set of pix to work on and there was nothing in the folder. So I looked in the other folders and no files were in any folders. Now I had organized the pictures in nested folders, like Day one, Munich, Day, Night. So all the folders were still there on the laptop, but not any picture files!

And to make it even wierder, the Folder of my daughter's pictures that I was not even working on also has no files in it, only the nested folders identfying each set of pictures.

So I restarted my G4 Tower and still no pix. I then cut the TiBook loose from the G4 Tower and booted it up on it's own. The same thing, no pix.

However, I noticed something really strange. When it booted up it started up just like my G4 Tower. The same startup items of Excel and Netscape. But ever stranger, the excel worksheet that I have open up first had been updated on the TiBook. Just like I had run a file sync program to sync the two computers. So I looked at the TiBook desktop and sure enough all the clutter that was on my G4 Tower was there on the TiBook's Desktop! I don't use a file sync program. But something had one way sync'd my files from the G4 Desktop to the TiBook without my permission. It appears that if the file had been on the TiBook but not on the Tower, then it deleted only the file, not the folders holding the files.

So I called Apple care, the guy told me that he had never heard of this happening and that I must have gotten a virus. So he talked me into buying a data restore program made by Prosofteng.com, called Data Rescue. The intent is to use it to restore the deleted picture files to the laptop.

Has anyone heard or had any experience that they could share with me about such a wierd file deletion problem? I am going to try recover the pix using Data Rescue, and then run a virus dection program that apple recommended. I just can't believe someone would write a virus that would do something this stupid, unless it was the company that makes the virus detection software?! Send me input...
 
- There has never been a recorded instance of a virus on a Mac OS X machine. There are no known viruses in circulation that affect Mac OS X (excluding MS-Office macro viruses) and I am extremely surprised that an Apple tech would try to sell you virus software.
I think if the tech in question new what he was doing and really did believe there was a virus, he would have your machine express couriered to an Apple lab so they could isolate it and find out what the virus was. More likely, the tech was just under-informed and uneducated.

- The incident you describe is almost certainly something strange about the way your system was handling the files on the target disk. It sounds like its somehow copied your home folder to the target disk, overwriting any of the files it found there.

- This might have happened because of something in PhotoShop Elements batch processing. If you, prehaps, had the source of the batch processing as your home drive, and the target set to the TiBook's drive, then it would copy all the files in your home directory onto the TiBook's drive, basically just copying any files it doesn't know how to process.

- If this is the case, there is a good chance that the actual pictures are still on the TiBook's drive, and only the Home folder has been over-written.
 
Thanks for the post. I had the same idea that there had never been a "true" virus for Mac; but when the Apple Care Tech told me that, I ask him for a case number so I could have some responsibility or tracking of what I am going through.

Now as far how I was operating P. Elements. I was using Elements on my Tower and processing the Picture files on the Ti Book. So Elements would open the file from the Ti Book, do it's thing and then save it back to the Ti Book in the Folder called Slides into a nested folder with a name like Day 2, Day 3 etc.

I never moved, copied or otherwised transfered any picture from the Ti Book to the Tower.

Also, one of the folders on the Ti Book, had my daughter's file that I never touched with Elements and all of it's contest are gone!

I hope I can get to the bottom of this one. I have got to get those picture files back. Thanks again and keep the faith, I have been using Mac since the beginning and I know we have the best system going.
 
At this point in time, I would use Data Rescue to get those images back.

It seems that Elements went overboard and worked on every folder on the book.
 
Thanks Cheryl for the Post.

I tried Data Rescue, but all it did was put up a listing of the contents of the Laptop. None of the missing pix files were found.

I am so mad at myself for not copying all the image files to my Tower, but I never dreamed of such a problem ever occuring.

Does anyone have any idea how I can look for the deleted JPEG files?

Better yet can anyone give me a trouble shooting tip, to get to the root cause of the problem. Sometime today, I am going to do a recreation of the problem with some Jpegs, just to see if I can get the same result.

Oh, and BTW, Apple had promised to ship the Data Rescue so I could get it yesterday, well they did not; so I canceled the order and bought it direct via download. Data Rescue is more suited to restoring files from a Disk that has been damaged or the catolog tree missing or corupt. It did nothing in my case, but yet maybe no program can give me back paradise.
 
First, if you still wish to recover those files off of the disk, STOP USING THE COMPUTER IMMEDIATELY. The longer you use it, the greater the chance the sectors on the hard disk where those pictures were stored get overwritten with new data, effectively sealing those pictures' fates.

Data Rescue should find a lot of deleted files every time you run it -- and it should scan your hard drive for quite a while before showing you a list of files. The way you worded your sentence leads me to believe that Data Rescue showed you a list of files immediately, meaning that it did not scan your hard drive very well. Make sure it's actually doing a thorough scan of the drive.

And last but not least, very early on we were taught NEVER to work on remote copies of files. ALWAYS copy them to the local machine, work on them, then copy back. I know it's too late now, but in the future, it may save you from another experience like this.

Good luck, and if worse comes to worse and you NEED those pictures, then there are companies that you can ship your drive off to and they'll recover whatever is recoverable. Let us know if you need something like that!
 
Thank ElDiabloConCaca for the post.

I knew to stop using the TiBook immediately. But thanks for reminding all of us. Anytime you want to recover files, you do not want anymore activity on the subject disk.

In regard to Data Rescue,I ran the "Thorough" scan and it ran for about two hours and then when it had finished it went through a calibration program for about 45 to 50 minutes and notified me it was finished.

I saved the list of files it found just like the instructions said and it did not find any of the deleted files. It just presented me with a total complete listing of the existing contents of my TiBook. Sure it found a bunch of what it calls "orphans" but they were of no use to me.

So worse has come to worse, let me know if there is a drive recovery shop in Atlanta, Georgia or where ever you recommend that has an excellant reputation. The Pictures are precious and dear to our family and we got to have them back.

Thanks again for your post and I look forward to a referal to a Drive recovery shop.
 
Can you try and recreate the same conditions and locate exactly where the files are being saved? Maybe if you do that, you can search at that place and see if the files are there, even if they were renamed.
 
While we're on the point of investigating the root cause of the problem, you might check with Adobe.com to see if this might even be a known issue. Is there a newer patch for PhotoShop Elements? If so, see if you can find the fix/update list to see if there's any mention of it. Take 10 mins to browse their support database, and if you can't find the answer, then contact them: make sure to include your Apple service request number, adaquete contact details, the version of PhotoShop Elements you are running, and so on.
 
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