Q: HELP.....lost my entire companies work from drive

If you don't hear from Prosoft, go out (tonight, if possible) and purchase a USB hard drive that has it own power supply that needs to be plugged into a power outlet to run.

DO NOT purchase a portable laptop style drive that only gets its power from a USB connection.

Again, purchase an external USB hard drive that has an independent power supply.

If we have to, we are going to install a newer version of OS X that you can boot your old Mac from to run it from an external hard drive to run the OS and the data recovery software you ended up purchasing, from a new external USB drive.

Your old Mac won't run fast from a USB drive, but USB drives are cheaper and easier to obtain from local electronics stores.

Get a USB drive storage size larger than 500 GBs.

A 1 TB drive will do fine if you don't want to spend too much on another backup drive, right now.

I also need to know the specs of your older Mac to determine what other, newer OS X version, if any, we can run other than OS X 10.6.8.

If you only checked this site at work, if you do not hear from Prosoft, at all, some time during your work day OR when you can, go out and purchase another USB hard drive as I mentioned in my above post, so we can get this data recovery started.

Do not use the old Mac for anything if you want to have better success of recovering your lost data.

If you keep using the old Mac, you run the risk of important data getting over written with new data.

Why not have him start his old Mac in Firewire Target Disk mode and connect it yo the new Mac running the data rescue software?

I don't know?

Does this still work with new Macs with Thunderbolt ports?

I don't have Thunderbolt ports on any of my older iMacs, so I didn't suggest this approach.

The data is missing from the old Mac conputer.

So, the software would have to be installed on the new Mac and run from the new Mac.

If you have the better and easier solution, spell it out in another reply for him to try tomorrow.

I am, basically, out of other ideas.

ThanX

I like your advice  to get  a usb hard drive but instead of installing an OS and booting from it I would start the old Mac in FTDM  How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode - Apple Support and connect it to the new Mac with a firewire to thunderbolt adapter http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD464LL/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapte r?fnode=8b

and run the recovery software on the new computer to attempt to copy the data to the usb hard drive.

In addition to the FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter, the OP would need to purchase a FireWire 800 cable, if the OP doesn't already have one of these cables.

Hopefully either an Apple Store or electronics store has FireWire 800 cables.

Will a Thunderbolt cable (instead of a FW800 cable)!work, instead,  between the two Macs using the FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter?

The OP may have better luck finding a Thunderbolt cable than a FW800 one.

This is why I just want to use the USB drive as a boot drive. Anything USB is easier to deal with than FireWire or Thunderbolt.

Running the software on the Mac that you're trying to recover is a bad idea in my opinion.You have the luxury of having another Mac right there that you could use. I hope the http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD464LL/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapte r?fnode=8bsoftware works for you.

If you need any assistance, keep us all in the loop until everything gets right with your Macs and your data.

I will not be in for a good chunk of the morning and early afternoon, so I hope other like, Mike Sombrio and others that came here to help will be there for you if you need it.

I wish you luck and the very best of results to your difficulties.

Good Luck!

Have no idea why that link got pisted again.....must have pasted it in again by mistake. Anyway I'll be at work all day but will try to check in when I can.

FWIW, I personally keep two backup copies of all work ever done

on site and one copy off site.  In addition to that, I keep two copies

of current work in progress on site and one copy off site.  All of these

backups are all on different devices.

Maybe I am too paranoid, but after working on something for hours or

days, I don't want to take any chance of having to go back to ground zero, either

from mechanical malfunction, software malfunction, OS malfunction, or just

plain user error.

Well,

I am sorry to learn this, but by continuing to use this Mac to work on because of your deadline, the applications you use write temp files to your Mac's intrenal hard drive and if these apps wrote over one tiny piece of data over your previous file data that was still somewhere on that internal hard drive, then that piece of data and that file that piece of data belonged to, became corrupted and unrecovetable.

I very hard and very painful lesson and now a lot of work for you to have to recreate, in addition, to your current working schedule.

You now learned and know what you need to do now.

You need to get a dilligent and daily backup regimen, now and have, at least one other external drive to have another redundant copy of your daily backup and /or to use to create weekly backups of your important work.

You must do this, now!

Data backups are especially important in a work related environment.

You need constant and consistent data backups of work related data.

Do anything you want with your own personal, home computer (even though I still recommend backups at home, too!), but in the workplace, computer data backups are absolutely needed and imperative!

In addition, you have learned, never upgrade/update a current computer or new computer without having a solid recent backup, first.

For work critical backups, forget OS X Time Machine and don't rely on "cloud", offsite server backups, either.

You need easily accessible locally stored backups of important work data.

Either use data cloning software like CarbonCopyCloner, by Bombich software, or SuperDuper, by Shirt Pocket software, or find a Mac compatible, dedicated backup software.

With any cloning software, if you use scheduled, automatic, timed backups/clonings, you must keep your Mac active and logged in.

To run backups after your work day,

Set your Mac to never sleep and never spin down the hard drives and independently set your Mac's display to sleep and to wakeup with a password for security

Also, at night, make sure your Mac is disconnected (either from a wireless connection, software connection or by physical disconnection)  from the Internet for additional security, too, every night you are away from this Mac

Good Luck to you in the future!