Restore by ibackup erased my mail boxes. I need help

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Level 2

388 points

Restore by ibackup erased my mail boxes. I need help

Complex problem that is entirely my fault. But I hope someone can help me.

I recently (several weeks) moved from my PB to a new MB. When I did that, I kept the PB as it was, and have been using the MB as my primary machine. I have been using ibackup regularly to protect important data and saving the files on my ipod.

The problem occured because I had to send my MB in for repairs, and I decided to "restore" my personal files from the ipod backup files back on to the PB. Unfortunately, it completely erased ALL of my email. Is there any way I can recover from this? Thank in advance...
Lee

G5 iMac, iBook, 15ALBook, macBook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Sep 17, 2006 11:28 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 17, 2006 12:27 PM in response to Lee Rodgers

Actually, I'm not sure you did anything wrong, nor do I fully understand what the situation really is. I don't know how does iBackup work, and it could very well be its fault rather than yours.

Are you running the same version of Mac OS X on both computers? What does "it completely erased ALL of my email" mean? How do you know it has been erased? Where was that mail stored (i.e. in account standard mailboxes or in custom local mailboxes)?

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Answer 2

Lee Rodgers Author

Level 2

388 points

Sep 18, 2006 11:29 AM in response to David Gimeno Gost

What happened is I ran ibackup, which seems to be a unix program which automates copying files back and forth from the mac to a separate drive. I have been using my ipod just to backup personal data such as docs and mail.

I am running Tiger on both computers, although the MB is intel and the PB is PPC. When I say it erased all my mail, when I launched Mail, it assumed that this was the first time I was using mail and launched the startup assistant. When I looked in the ∼/library/mail folder, there was nothing there. I looked on the ipod, and there were multiple files there including my custom mail boxes.

Is it possible to revert to where I was before my action? Do you have any ideas what my options should be. TIA

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Answer 3

Sep 18, 2006 2:35 PM in response to Lee Rodgers

Well, if the data on the PowerBook has been erased, and you don't have a backup of that, there is no way to revert to the previous situation, other than using a data recovery tool, which may or may not be able to salvage the deleted files.

If the data previously on the MacBook is now on the iPod, however, you should be able to copy it to the PowerBook. Mail stores most preferences and all account settings in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. Everything else, including all your messages and mailboxes, is stored within the ~/Library/Mail/ folder. Copying these (the preferences file and the entire Mail folder) to the PowerBook should be all you need to do in order to have Mail set up exactly the same as it was on the MacBook.

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Answer 4

Lee Rodgers Author

Level 2

388 points

Sep 20, 2006 12:59 PM in response to David Gimeno Gost

Thanks. I did that and got 'most' of my mail back. Unfortunately, since I don't have my wife's account on the MB, I hadn't been backing up her mail. I'm in the dog house, but most of my stuff is back. Again, thanks for your help.

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