Inebriated Leopard
Half of you will say I'm an idiot, half will say I'm a loser....
Friday afternoon, I receive my Leopard install DVD. I pop it in the iMac, start the install, and go have a beer. I come back, and it says "installation failed". I think to myself, "hmm - Apple usually doesn't have too many issues, this is odd"
I begin the install again and go to the bar. This is where things get patchy.
I come home from the bar (yes, alone - not a good night...ha) and see the failed signal again! This time, I remember seeing the installation volume with a yellow exclamation sign in a triangle on it. Something about the volume being corrupt? I SWEAR I tried to do it again and it all seemed to be working fine. I went through a few prompts and then I remember it asking about journaling enabled and whatnot. It does it's magic, and 50 mins later I am upgraded to Leopard right?
No - I now have a brand new iMac with none of my old files (No music, no pictures, no emails, no bookmarks, no finance/insurance documents - NOTHING!!!!!!!) Of course, I didn't have a backup of any of this (I ordered an external hard drive today to use with Time Machine for the future.
What do I do now? To add to the frustration, today I called Apple. After waiting 50 minutes on hold, I talked to a guy for 10 mins, he put me on hold and my effing iPhone said "call failed" I called back, but it was then after business hours of 6-6.
Is there any way to retrieve old files if in fact I did restore everything?!???? It's odd - when I type in websites, my old information pops up automatically, and my keychain password still is the same. However, mail, iTunes and iPhoto are all empty - WHAT DO I DO!???
Friday afternoon, I receive my Leopard install DVD. I pop it in the iMac, start the install, and go have a beer. I come back, and it says "installation failed". I think to myself, "hmm - Apple usually doesn't have too many issues, this is odd"
I begin the install again and go to the bar. This is where things get patchy.
I come home from the bar (yes, alone - not a good night...ha) and see the failed signal again! This time, I remember seeing the installation volume with a yellow exclamation sign in a triangle on it. Something about the volume being corrupt? I SWEAR I tried to do it again and it all seemed to be working fine. I went through a few prompts and then I remember it asking about journaling enabled and whatnot. It does it's magic, and 50 mins later I am upgraded to Leopard right?
No - I now have a brand new iMac with none of my old files (No music, no pictures, no emails, no bookmarks, no finance/insurance documents - NOTHING!!!!!!!) Of course, I didn't have a backup of any of this (I ordered an external hard drive today to use with Time Machine for the future.
What do I do now? To add to the frustration, today I called Apple. After waiting 50 minutes on hold, I talked to a guy for 10 mins, he put me on hold and my effing iPhone said "call failed" I called back, but it was then after business hours of 6-6.
Is there any way to retrieve old files if in fact I did restore everything?!???? It's odd - when I type in websites, my old information pops up automatically, and my keychain password still is the same. However, mail, iTunes and iPhoto are all empty - WHAT DO I DO!???
Comments
Unless there is a folder called Pevious System in your hard disk's root directory.
Also, try spotlight to find old data.
- If you chose Erase and Install, then you need to STOP using the computer until you can get a copy of an undelete utility.
- if you did a regular Upgrade Install, then you need to run Disk Utility to see if the disk is OK. If it fails to repair it, then you need to get DiskWarrior.
- Was your disk partitioned? Did you by any chance try to install on the wrong partition? If the install failed, how can you be booted into OS X now? Are you booted into Tiger and not Leopard?
I went through a few prompts and then I remember it asking about journaling enabled and whatnot. It does it's magic, and 50 mins later I am upgraded to Leopard right??
The Journalling-enabled option is only there when you're about to erase the hard drive and all data and reformat it with the HFS+ file system. This makes me suspect that Lundy's first option was most likely.
- Cease using the computer. Everything you do on it reduces the chance of recovering data.
- Wait until you have a software application to undelete files and the external drive.
- Connect the external hard drive.
- Boot from the OS X disc and install OS X on the External hard disk drive
- Boot the iMac from the external drive (hold down Option after the start-up chime)
- Install and run the data-recovery application on the external drive.
- Recover as much data as you can from the Internal drive to the External drive.
- Only when you are sure you have as much as you can get, back-up the data back to the Internal drive.
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
You have to give more information.
- If you chose Erase and Install, then you need to STOP using the computer until you can get a copy of an undelete utility.
- if you did a regular Upgrade Install, then you need to run Disk Utility to see if the disk is OK. If it fails to repair it, then you need to get DiskWarrior.
- Was your disk partitioned? Did you by any chance try to install on the wrong partition? If the install failed, how can you be booted into OS X now? Are you booted into Tiger and not Leopard?
This is what I do not know....
I didn't think I was drunk enough to do an erase and install, however, I remember going through the process twice with the error popping up both times. It then "magically" started working and I had to select journaling enabled...etc.
I'm going to go ahead and assume I did an erase and install, as that's most likely what happened. I'm going to purchase the ProSoft data rescue and wait for the external USB drive to come this week. What are the odds that I get everything back? I have roughly 40GB of music, 1-2GB of photos and less than 10GB of documents that I would like back. I'm mostly concerned about the photos and documents, as all of my music is on my iPod that I can get back...
What are the major differences with the journaling..etc? Is it still worth it to call Apple support again, wait the time, and see what they say? Or would they tell me the same as you guys?
Thank you very much for the help - I should probably shut this computer down in the meantime, huh?
This is what I do not know....
I didn't think I was drunk enough to do an erase and install, however, I remember going through the process twice with the error popping up both times. It then "magically" started working and I had to select journaling enabled...etc.
Odds are if it asked you to choose the Journaled option then you were in a Clean Install sequence.
I'm going to go ahead and assume I did an erase and install, as that's most likely what happened. I'm going to purchase the ProSoft data rescue and wait for the external USB drive to come this week. What are the odds that I get everything back? I have roughly 40GB of music, 1-2GB of photos and less than 10GB of documents that I would like back. I'm mostly concerned about the photos and documents, as all of my music is on my iPod that I can get back...
OK - hopefully you are going to be reading this from another computer, as anything and everything you do on that computer will be asking for disk space, writing logs, writing the Safari history, etc., and each time a program does that, the OS will cheerfully give it space, which the OS has been told (by the Erase) is now free for any purpose, even though all of your data is in fact still there (what part was not overwritten by the new OS).
When a simple Erase is done, all it does it mark all sections of the disk as "free" and "available." It does not actually blank them out unless you also chose the Security Erase option, in which case you are totally screwed.
As far as getting your data back, it is sheer luck - immediately after the Erase, it was still all there. Then the OS gets installed. If it happened to be written over what was the area of your data, that data is of course now gone.
However, I suspect that an OS install probably uses the same space that the previous OS was using, so you might have gotten away with that. The problem is, everything you did with the computer after that has the chance of Safari, the OS, etc. asking to write to a file, or make a new file, and the OS will hand out disk space thinking that all of those areas are now free and available. Each write that Safari or the OS does to the disk runs the risk of writing over one of your photos or documents. It's not going to write 12 GB, so the odds are that you will get something recovered. It's just a crapshoot what that will be.
What are the major differences with the journaling..etc? Is it still worth it to call Apple support again, wait the time, and see what they say? Or would they tell me the same as you guys?
The only thing about the journaling is that it is an indication that you were doing an Erase and Install. On a regular Upgrade Install it would not ask you that. So no, it would not do any good to call Apple - in fact they would probably just tell you that you are SOL. The proper thing to do is stop using the computer for anything, do the Data Rescue thing, and see how much it can recover. The more you use the computer, the higher the chance that some of your stuff will be overwritten.
Thank you very much for the help - I should probably shut this computer down in the meantime, huh?
Yes. Only boot from a DVD or another hard drive, whether it is the Data Rescue II DVD or the system DVD to install onto the external. In fact, even though you can download Data Rescue, what I would do is rush out to an Apple Store and buy it on a DVD to avoid the disk-writing that downloading it is going to do.
When I install OS X on the external hard drive, should I install Tiger or Leopard, or doesn't it matter? Hopefully it doesn't matter because I just looked and I don't have Tiger anymore...
Any final tips for me?
Do you guys leave your external on full-time, or do you turn it on/off with your computers?
Thanks,
Mike
mail.mbox
iTunes Music Library.xml
iTunes Music Library-0600
How do I update my existing mail to recover my old mail messages, and how do I update iTunes to read all of the old play counts I've accumulated over the years?
Also - when I installed Leopard, it no longer came with iPhoto - is there somewhere I can get that?
Thanks,
Mike
Then you do your data migration.
Then you import your .mbox into Leopard Mail.
Then you import that iTunes XML file into Leopard/latest iTunes.
Sorry, just some quick suggestions for now, gotta run.
I've recovered a majority of the important files (photos, documents, music) to my external hard drive. Now I'm left with files that I'm not sure how to incorporate into my existing mail, iTunes and iPhoto:
mail.mbox
iTunes Music Library.xml
iTunes Music Library-0600
I don't have a "mail.mbox", but if the file has anything in it (do a Get Info to see how big it is) then try putting it in Mailboxes in ~/Library/Mail.
iTunes Music Library.xml contains your track counts and play counts and everything else about each track. It goes in Music/iTunes.
I don't know about the other file (-0600). See how big it is. Drag it to TextEdit's icon and drop it to see what is in it.
Regarding iPhoto, that is part of iLife and comes with the computer, not with the OS. It will be on one of the disks that came with the computer.
If you lost the gray disks that came with the computer, you'll have to buy iLife 08.
How do I update my existing mail to recover my old mail messages
Mail messages are individual files located in mailbox folders in the main "Mailboxes" folder in the "Mail" folder in Users/yourshortname/Library.
If you didn't recover any mailbox folders, then they were overwritten and not recoverable. If you recovered files that end in ".emlx", those are mail messages and you can try dragging them into Mail's window, or putting them in a folder that you name "Messages", and put that in a folder that you name "xxxxxx.mbox", and then put the whole thing in a folder "Mailboxes" in the Mail folder in the Library and try and choose Mail's "Import Mailboxes" command.
Of course, if the recovery program was able to keep the folder structure, none of that will be needed. Often, though, the best those programs can do is give you a pile of files, which is better than nothing.
Thanks,
Mike