How to recover missing desktop files?

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Level 2

389 points

How to recover missing desktop files?

While in Adobe Bridge, my friend accidently dragged his User folder to the Shared User folder (the graphics pen sorta grabbed it withouthim noticing). He tried to drag it back out of Shared, but it said it couldn't be modified. So he rebooted, and it started up with his own user being as if new, with none of his files or prefs. So then he tried dragging his desktop, docs folders, etc back from Shared to where they belonged in his user. That worked for everything except the Desktop. When he tried to copy that,it asked if he wanted to replace the existing (blank) desktop with the one from the shared folder, which showed all his desktop files. But when he okayed it, the resulting desktop was blank. He doesn't know if he accidently overwrote in the wrong direction (he doesn't think so), or if something else happened. He's a photographer and had hundreds of edited image files in folders on the desktop- so all his recent work since a back up a few weeks ago is gone. Spotlight cannot find any of them by name, nor any other desktop files but the new blank one. so the files are at least not visible, if not gone. Here's the thing: if you run Terminal and look at the desktop file, it shows 2,064 items... which might be his files (?). But i have no idea how to get at them. Nothing shows in the Desktop trash hidden file. Is there anything short of expensive recovery software that might find these files, which are probably not overwritten yet? (he's being careful not to use the drive so that they don't get overwritten)

PowerBook G4, iMac G4, iBook G4, Pismo and MORE, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Feb 16, 2007 9:49 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 16, 2007 1:41 PM in response to lisajoy

Trying to diagnose something like this third hand probably isn't very effective. But when you open Terminal you are "in" your home directory. If you then issue this command:

cd Desktop

and hit return you will then be "in" your Desktop folder. If you then issue the list command:

ls -al

you will get a list of all the files and folders that are in the Desktop folder. If he sees everything, then the stuff is there. He could try creating a new folder in his home folder, call it something like fromDesktop, and then issue this command (this assumes he is still "in" the Desktop folder):

mv * ~/fromDesktop

This will move everything from the Desktop folder into the fromDesktop folder. A list command will verify things:

ls -al ~/fromDesktop

If all his stuff is listed, but he still can't see it in its new location using the Finder, then it could be that somehow the invisible bit got set.

And for Finder's sake, tell him to stop saving all that stuff to the Desktop! Put stuff in folders in his home folder. I've seen cases where excessive numbers of files dropped on the Desktop brought the Finder to its knees for many hours. Every single thing on the Desktop is treated as a window by the Finder, and having a ton of stuff there is needlessly slowing things down. And he should be backing up every night, not every couple of weeks. There are many programs available that will do this automatically. If he is in business he should be using one. Not to mention burning separate CDs of things for every client.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

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Answer 2

lisajoy Author

Level 2

389 points

Feb 17, 2007 7:51 AM in response to Francine Schwieder

thanks francine- yeah, i was pretty much horrified that he had all that on the desktop, and he himself was horrified at how long it had been since he backed up. The good news is that he has the original, unedited images on another hard drive so they are not completely lost; just weeks of editing work down the tube if the edited ones are gone.
Thanks for the terminal commands... can he work in Terminal to try to find them without writing to the drive? He's afraid to do anything that might overwrite those files. I think he's got the demo version of Data Rescue running on it right now. I suggested he clone the drive to another hard drive and work on the copy, but he doesn't have a big enough hard drive to clone to.

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Answer 3

Feb 17, 2007 11:19 AM in response to lisajoy

While some stuff would get written to the drive, he could minimize it by setting a different destination for the command, even copy it instead of moving it. Thus, if he has a drive named "Backup" mounted, he could create a folder there called "fromDesktop" and then issue a copy command instead of a move command. Here's the commands, he would enter each one and hit return after each:

cd ~/Desktop

ls -al

cp -r * /Volumes/Backup/fromDesktop

ls -al /Volumes/Backup/fromDesktop

And then open the folder on the Backup drive to see if the stuff now shows up in the Finder.

As for not having a big enough drive to clone to: I would buy one. Weeks of work lost? A big drive is a couple of hundred bucks, which is cheap in comparison, and he should already HAVE a clone and keep it updated! He needs it. Everyone does really, but especially someone in business should have a clone that is updated nightly. You can't afford to lose data if you are in business, and sooner or later you will if you don't have a clone and multiple data backups. Also a clone will allow you to continue working if something goes wrong with your system or your internal drive when you are in the middle of a job.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

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Answer 4

lisajoy Author

Level 2

389 points

Mar 17, 2007 11:49 PM in response to lisajoy

The only thing that worked was a recovery utility, and he's only getting some of them back via it. Moral... back up, back up, back up....

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