My files have become hidden - how do I get at them?

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Level 1

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My files have become hidden - how do I get at them?

I was trying to free up some space on my hard drive as I was showing only 3.5 out of 40GB available. I read a thread in this forum that suggested downloading whatsize to see what could be done away with. Whatsize showed a second user with my name but a . in front that was using up 17GB's. I logged off my computer - which I never do - to see if when I logged back on this other user would show up. Instead my screen had reverted to the way it looked when I first bought my ibook (new). The user name is mine and it responds to my password but I cannot find my photos, docs or music files. The hard drive is still showing as nearly full so I assume that the files are in here somewhere. I tried logging on as the root user - but I still could not find my files. Now I have purchased an external hard drive (250 GB's) - can I dump the entire contents of my drive onto the external drive and try to find the files that way? Please help me. I do not know where to look and I do not want to cause any further damage. Thanks for your time!

ibook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Apr 17, 2007 9:01 PM

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Answer 1

cornelius

Level 6

17,826 points

Apr 18, 2007 5:41 PM in response to Tamara6

Tamara:

In your first post in another thread, you said:
So I looked in the help menu to try to delete the user. It said to turn off filevault. I tried and was told I did not have enough diskspace.

Have you been able to do anything about turning FileWault off? I suspect that you were not able to, since FileVault saves your User Folder in a sparseimage which occupies as much space as your Users Folder. In order to be able to turn FileVault off, you need that much space more. This article gives you a bit more information about the issue.

Buying an external HDD is a good move. Actually that would have been my first recommendation. I hope that you bought a firewire external HDD, as you cannot make a bootable clone on a USB device. So, go ahead and clone your entire internal HDD to the external Firewire HDD using SuperDuper. SD will make a bootable clone from which you will later boot your computer.

(The . in front of your user name indicates it is a hidden file. It might be that your Home Folder was renamed, with a . in front of it. You can try downloading Wizzard and see if it shows your hidden folder. Note: This is a parenthesis; I suggest backing up and disabling FileVault first).

Post back and let me know how it is going, and we will see what comes next.

Good luck.

cornelius

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Answer 2

John Huber1

Level 6

17,745 points

Apr 18, 2007 5:50 PM in response to Tamara6

Hi Tamara,

If Cornelius' suggestions don't recover your files, try the following article.

Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4 or later: Return to default desktop, apparent "loss" of home directory

John

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Answer 3

Tamara6 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 18, 2007 7:11 PM in response to John Huber1

Gentlemen,

You are like knights in shining armor! Ok, I did manage to turn off filevault. I bought the Lacie 250GB external hard drive and it is mounted. I have downloaded the superduper. Before I go to town on all of that - What is described in John's post sounds like exactly what happened. However, I cannot find a user with my files. All the files I am worried about are empty - itunes, documents etc. Most of the files are empty. I am opening the finder window, highlighting the HD and then the users folder. Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing a step? Is there somewhere to look for hidden users without downloading anymore software? - all this trouble began with downloading whatsize.

So just to be clear - are there anymore places I can look for my files before I

1. Make a clone
2. download Wizzard
3. restore my ibook hard drive

and does this seem like the right strategy?

Thank you so much for your help!

Tamara

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Answer 4

cornelius

Level 6

17,826 points

Apr 18, 2007 7:19 PM in response to Tamara6

Tamara:

Go ahead and clone your internal HDD to the external first. Then you might want to try the procedure John linked. Should anything go amiss you will then have the backup on the external.

Let me know how it goes.

Good luck.

cornelius

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Answer 5

John Huber1

Level 6

17,745 points

Apr 18, 2007 7:33 PM in response to Tamara6

You may also need Wizzard that Cornelius linked to if the files have been made invisible. You should be able to remove the "." (dot) before the file name with it.

John

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