wow time machine erased EVERYTHING :( Please help!

[DrFlynn]

Hey friends,

I have a 500GB graid2 firewire drive and I set it as my time machine disk. I selected the files I wanted it to to omit in the backup process and it started syncing about 10 gigs. I had about 80 gigs free so I couldn't imagine their being a problem. As it started the backup, I double checked to make sure it created a new directory and not running over any of my other data. I have thousands of hours of work saved on this disk.

So the problem. Half way through the first sync my macbook had a kernel panic and I reset it. When I checked the disk on reboot, there is is only one directory... the 5 gigs of time machine and thats it. What the heck happened? How can I get my data back? this data is very valuable, but I don't have any money right now. please help!

Rian

[DrFlynn]

By the way, I unplugged the drive and I am awaiting some sort of real solution. the drive was only showing 5 gigs in use btw

[kmac1036]

By the way, I unplugged the drive and I am awaiting some sort of real solution. the drive was only showing 5 gigs in use btw

The combination of the Kernel panic and TM trying to use the device pinched you in a rare case. If you have another drive to spare, or borrow anything, to see if the KP is caused by TM. You need to make sure the panic is a one time thing or a hardware issue with your drive. You will need to use either Data Rescue II from www.prosofteng.com (http://www.prosofteng.com) or file salvage from www.subrosasoft.com (http://www.subrosasoft.com) becasue I own Data Rescue and heard good things about file salvage, these are my 2 pics.

Good call on NOT using the drive.. likely the diretory got erased but the folder for TM stuck, being the last active directory when it crashed, so the caching properties of HFS saved that one, but lost the others. Likely, the files are still there and is well worth the $90 and even consider a 2nd drive purchace to use with TM. I have and it works pretty good.