Applescript Deleted Files via "Make Folder" command

well, I'm actually surprised that line does anything. the proper syntax for that command is:

tell application "Finder" to make new folder at folder "Canon EOS T1i" of folder "Pictures" of folder "Steveporter" of folder "Users" of disk "Macintosh HD"

in other words, the command is make new folder at, not make folder in, and the of application "System Events" bit at the end is confusingly meaningless. The command does work for some reason, and even works correctly on 10.7, but I have no idea why.

As to why it erased your files... GIGO maybe? Garbage In, Garbage Out - unexpected commands produce unpredictable results. I'm still trying to figure out why it makes it past the error checker.

As an aside, please do at least minimal checking before you download and run software. A quick search on this forum (or even google) would have told you that MacKeeper is suspect: it has questionable value as an app, some slimy advertising aspects, and it is intentionally (IMO) difficult to remove once installed. There's even a long-running debate on whether to consider it a trojan. Hopefully it will recover your files (though there are better apps out there for that purpose), but I suggest you start reading up on how to remove it.

That's surprising. Any files deleted by accident this way would only be deleted superficially (i.e. their file system entries unlinked without touching the file data), so even a low-grade recovery program should have been able to find something. I'm not really up on the best recovery software, but the question comes up here enough that you shold be able to search for it. assuming you didn't add a whole bunch more files to the memory card (which would start overwriting file data), you may be dealing with a failing memory card.

with respect to syntax, you should keep in mind that the 'of' syntax and the 'tell' syntax are parallel. Tell application "Finder" tells applescript that the following material should be owned and handled by the Finder process, and of application "System Events" tells applescript that the preceding material should be owned and handled by the System Events process, so when you use both in a single line like that, it's unclear which of the applications is actally being invoked. The Finder and System events both do file system handling - which may be why it passes error checking - but they do it in slightly different ways with slightly different syntax. You should really never use them together: use the finder for the things the finder does well (moving, copying, deleting and creating file system objects and woking with Finder Windws) and use system events for everything else, and never nest them.

You can also try something like this:

set folderPath to quoted form of (POSIX path of (path to pictures folder) & "Canon EOS T1i/" as text)
do shell script "mkdir -p " & folderPath

Have you run Disk Utility to check if the disk and file system are ok? The only time I ever lost files from an applescript was just after I shifted OSes - I don't remember whether it was when I moved to 10.5 or 10.6. I tried to write to a property list file from System Events and a large chunk of folders simply vanished so that I had to restore them from backups. I'd put that down to some kind of random HFS corruption due to the system upgrade. I ran through the normal disk diagnostics and used Yasu to clear out all the caches and whatnot, and the problem has never resurfaced.

I'm assuming from you recovery attempts that you don't have backups? Backup drives are cheap, data isn't.spend the $150 for a terabyte drive and turn on Time Machine; you'll never know when you'll be glad you did.

TacosAreDelicious wrote:

About OS's though, about a month ago I switched from Lion back to Snow Leopard (doing a full backup and then reformatting my internal drive before doing a clean install of Snow Leopard) so could that have anything to do with it?

Well, I couldn't prove it, but it's the possibility that makes most sense to me. I can't think of anything else that would cause folders to disappear in bulk except some kind of file system gremlin, and a new system install is the most likely point at which to get some type of corruption. As I said, run disk utility, clear out everything you can clear out, and the problem shouldn't recurr.

With respect to the multi-drive failures, though, it sounds like the universe is trying to tell you something. 😉

I have not heard good things about WD external enclosures. The drive are supposedly OK. Take drive out put in another enclosure.

Stop using the drive immediately.

Get an external drive. I like OWC.

I recommend you do a google search on any external harddrive you are looking at.

I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. When I started having trouble with it, I did a google search and found a lot of complaints about the drive enclosure. I ended up buying a new drive enclosure. On my second go around, I decided to buy a drive enclosure with a good history of working with Macs. The chip set seems to be the key ingredient. The Oxford line of chips seems to be good. I got the Oxford 911.

Has everything interface:

FireWire 800/400 + USB2, + eSATA 'Quad Interface'

&

save a little money interface:

FireWire 400 + USB 2.0

This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

The latest the hard drive enclosures support the newer serial ata drives. The drive and closure that I list supports only older parallel ata.

Here is an external hd enclosure.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW91UAL1K/

Here is what one contributor recommended:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10452917#10452917

Folks in these Mac forums recommend LaCie, OWC or G-Tech.

Here is a list of recommended drives:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5564509#5564509

FireWire compared to USB. You will find that FireWire 400 is faster than USB 2.0 when used for a external harddrive connection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#USB_compared_to_FireWire

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storageexternal.html

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Here is my list. Your going to need another external drive to recover the data wit these utilities anyway.

Boot in safe mode. Hold down the shift key when powering on the machine. This will run a disk repair program. Boot up will take longer as the harddrive is scanned and repaired.

See this article:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393

Or from mrtotes article :

Boot from the OS X Install disk and from the Menu Bar choose Disk Utility. Then run "Repair Disk" and "Repair Disk Permissions" on your hard disk.

Here the apple article on booting single user mode and using fsck. See the section on Use fsck:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Perhaps Disk Warrior will be of some help:

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."

They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...

http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm

"Data Rescue II is the best data recovery software on the market for recovering files from a problem hard drive. Data Rescue II works when other tools fail. Data Rescue II is also completely safe to use since it does not attempt any risky repairs to the drive while its scanning."

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume. FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:

-- been accidentally deleted.

-- become unreadable due to media faults.

-- been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.

http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1

"TestDisk is a free data recovery utility. It was primarily designed to help recover lost data storage partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally erasing a partition table)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk

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"*Hard drive data recovery and warranty implications*

Hard drives that have become non-functional through normal use, and have had data recovery performed on them by DriveSavers or Ontrack Data Recovery can be returned to Apple for warranty service. This includes products covered by the AppleCare Protection Plan. The cost of any data recovery attempts is not covered by the Apple Limited Warranty."

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3974?viewlocale=en_US

Entering:

mac data recovery

into Google will list some firms who specialize in recovering data. Data recovery isn't cheap.

Examples:

1) Ontrack Data Recovery is the world leader in data recovery services and data recovery software offering the fastest, most convenient and cost-effective solutions to clients who have experienced data loss.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

2) Enter the world of DriveSavers Data Recovery…

* Data Recovery Tools

* Data Recovery Process

* Data Recovery Cleanroom

http://www.drivesavers.com/

"Encryption: DriveSavers engineers have been trained and certified by leading encryption vendors, such as GuardianEdge, Utimaco Safeguard, PGP and PointSec, to safely recover file-level and disk-level encrypted data"

http://www.drivesavers.com/recovery-services/encryption/

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List of recovery software tried:

http://discussions.apple.com/post!reply.jspa?messageID=11100707

Robert