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...
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...