Software Update And Lost Email?

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Software Update And Lost Email?

Hi,

I recently did a security update which crashed mid download leaving me with no operating system. I was on 10.4.something and had to reinstall OSX and could only find the disks that got me to 10.3.9. I got the machine running, but I seem to have lost every .mac email in and out for the last 12 months! Slightly upsetting. The email before 12 months ago is fine and rebuilding mailboxes did nothing. Does anybody have any thoughts on whether I should....

a) upgrade to 10.4.something again and hope for the best.
b) use recovery software to unerase my whole life.
c) something else clever that I havent thought of.

Many thanks in advance.

powerbook g4, Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on May 14, 2007 4:41 PM

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Answer 1

May 15, 2007 5:40 PM in response to scumqueen

Hi “scumqueen” 🙂

The first thing you should do is verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:

The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?

Also, make sure you have enough available disk space (several GB).

The file format used by Mail changed drastically in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Mail 2.x knows about the old data format and can import mailboxes created by Mail 1.x, but Mail 1.x knows nothing about the new data format used by Mail 2.x.

Mail’s mailboxes are located in ~/Library/Mail/. Although *.mbox packages appear to be files in Mac OS X 10.3, they’re actually folders just like in Mac OS X 10.4. In the Finder, ctrl-click on an *.mbox package and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu to see the files it contains.

For each mailbox, Mail 1.x stores all the messages in a single file in standard mbox format (the mbox file within the *.mbox folder/package), whereas Mail 2.x stores messages in individual *.emlx files within a Messages folder that Mail 1.x knows nothing about.

What you can see in Mail 1.x now is the mail that was there when you upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Mail 2.x converts mailboxes to the new format without removing the files used by Mail 1.x — see Mac OS X 10.4 Mail: Some mailbox files used by Mac OS X 10.3 are not deleted after importing.

You need something like emlx to mbox Converter or Emailchemy to convert the *.emlx files to standard mbox format in order to be able to import them (as Other / Standard mbox) in Mail 1.x.

Alternatively, upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4 should make the mail stored in the new *.emlx format (which Mail 1.x doesn’t recognize) to be available again.

Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

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Answer 2

scumqueen Author

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May 16, 2007 11:30 AM in response to David Gimeno Gost

Thanks very much David - that is very helpful.
Cant repair using Disk Utility, it seems to get stuck for ages and then fails (invalid node structure?).
Unfortunately, that means I cant upgrade to 10.4.x either (I've tried and that fails too).
But I control clicked as you suggested and the messages appear to be there, so you have stopped me from stressing and I'm at least confident that I will be able to retrieve everything.
Thanks again.

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Answer 3

May 16, 2007 12:10 PM in response to scumqueen

You’re welcome.

If Disk Utility reports problems it cannot fix, even when starting up from a different disk, you’ll have to either erase the disk and restore from a backup or try a more powerful disk utility, such as DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro, or Drive Genius.

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