Lost iDisk Files

That means the disk image is damaged. Perhaps the computer was shut down before it finished syncing, or the Internet connection was lost while it was syncing. You may be able to repair it by following these instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24583 and http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330423-263.html

They are gone forever now.

Apple first announced the shut down of iDisk in June 2011, giving users 13 months notice to save their data.

During that 13 months Apple sent all MobileMe users multiple reminders, increasing in frequency as the shut down date approached.

After the shut down date of June 30th 2012, Apple gave a grace period of yet another month to download data before it was finally deleted.

At the end of July 2012, Apple finally shut down the MobileMe servers, and deleted any remaining data and accounts that had not been moved to iCloud in the prior 14 months.

If you missed all that, and haven't maintained offline backups of your iDisk data, it is now gone.

Your files have been deleted from the iDisk server and there is no way of retrieving them from there.

However, if you had iDisk Syncing enabled you may be able to locate the disk image which formed the 'local copy'. Go to System Preferences>MobileMe>iDisk and if iDisk Syncing is turned on, stop it. You should also go to the Sync pane and stop all syncing, then go to the Account pane and sign out and remove your username and password, otherwise you are liable to get error messages.

If iDisk syncing had been on and you turned it off, you should find on your Desktop a disk image called 'previous local idisk for...' or a folder containing the image. Open that and it should contain your files at the time of the last sync. If this does not appear, you should be able to locate the file in your user Library in the 'Filesync' folder (on Snow Leopard - I don't know whether it's somewhere different in Leopard).

If iDisk Syncing had never been turned on then I'm afraid your files are lost. (Time Machine may back up the local copy if it wasn't excluded, but it did not back up the online iDisk).

Time Machine would only backup files you had stored locally. If the only copy of your files was in iDisk (always a bad idea) then they would not be backed up in Time Machine.

If you were using iDisk Syncing (not just saving files direct to the mounted iDisk on the desktop) you may have a disk image on your desktop with your iDisk files in.