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Ilife 6 screwed up

post #1 of 24
4/16/06 at 12:36pm
Thread Starter 
Help..Im at my wits end. Haven't felt like this since i junked my windows system 18 months ago.

Itunes has damaged my library file, had to start a new one.

Iphoto has corrupted its library file started new one, now its confused with the old empty file and the new one. Also when i import pics to iphoto it is having trouble displaying thumbnails.

Imovie HD has corrupted my latest family movie all clips sent to trash. This hasn't all happened at once but frequently since upgrading to ilife 06.

It's almost like there's a virus on my machine. I have reinstalled itunes and iphoto but its all still screwed up. I dont know whether it was since upgrading to tiger or ilife 06 but at the moment my system is terrible and the performance of iphoto and itunes is poor.

Anybody having the same problems? Tempted to wipe system and do fresh install but am afraid that will screw up to. At the moment this feels like a windows system not mac os.

Any ideas are very welcome and appreciated.
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post #2 of 24
4/16/06 at 12:38pm
  • Ebby
  • RIAA's Most Wanted
Check permissions in Disk utility.

It saved my butt yesterday and may help you.
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post #3 of 24
4/16/06 at 12:52pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Ebby
Check permissions in Disk utility.

It saved my butt yesterday and may help you.

If you aren't running Tiger and can't spotlight that, Disk Utility is in the following location:

Applications > Utilities

To repair/verify disk permissions, click on the disk in the left pannel that you want to check permissions for and then on the right click either "Verify Disk Permissions" or "Repair Disk Permissions".
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post #4 of 24
4/16/06 at 1:17pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks guys already did that but nothing. Also verified disk and no problems there.

Something strange is happening though. All my cookies have dissapeared and i have tried to download 10.4.6 combo but it fails to mount. Also tried to download omnidisksweeper and whatsize but these also failed to mount. Finder says I have 30 gigs free hard drive from 149gb. I am running iMac G5 rev a with 10.4.6.
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post #5 of 24
4/16/06 at 1:20pm
Thread Starter 
something else i have just remembered. Last few days when mail has been checking with server, messages have appeared in my inbox. When I click on them there is a message saying i need to login to my server to download the full messages.

I think my system is totally screwed.
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post #6 of 24
4/16/06 at 1:56pm
  • Ebby
  • RIAA's Most Wanted
It sounds like you are having trouble wit EVERYTHING! Try downloading THIS and under cleaning, check everything that has the word cache and "temporary files" and click execute.

After that move to "Maintenance" and repair permissions and run all the scripts. Click execute and restart. This restart WILL TAKE NOTICEABLY LONGER. This is normal, as it is rebuilding your caches.

On restart, open activity monitor (Applications->Utilities) and click "CPU" 3/4 of the way down. When most activity stops, restart a second time.

Hope that works.
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post #7 of 24
4/16/06 at 4:10pm
Thread Starter 
Ok things have gone from bad to ....extremely horrific.

Had thought that maybe i needed to slim down disk size. Used What size to delete some big files accidenteally deleted the sparse image (but trash wouldn't delete it) tried to find sparse image in trash but not there. Restarted mac...damn message comes up unable to loggin to this user at this time.

Login to system admin and can see all folders for user account there, however I have FileVault activated and cannot access them.

So i cant login to account and i cant copy files from damaged user account. Is there someway i can sort this via the terminal or am i really stuffed.

Thanks for the help so far.

p.s tried to delete user account but os would not allow me.
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post #8 of 24
4/16/06 at 4:38pm
  • Ebby
  • RIAA's Most Wanted
OUCH! That sparse image was your encrypted user folder. You need to get that out of the trash ASAP and back to /Users/YourUser/.
Quote:
Originally posted by matracer
(but trash wouldn't delete it)

You are so lucky! In onyX under Appearance, check "show hidden files and folders" Hopefully if you do a search you can find your sparseimage and restore it to its proper location. If you already deleted it or can't recover it, I'm afraid your account is hosed.
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post #9 of 24
4/16/06 at 4:43pm
  • Kickaha
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Hmm.

Quick question - what's your spare disk space like?
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post #10 of 24
4/16/06 at 4:59pm
Thread Starter 
ok...its looking bad

Have set onyx to show hidden files all i can see at the moment is .ds_store and .cfusertextencoding.

Where is the trash file normally located? looked in .trashes and .trash nothing there.

Have accessed corrupted user name through root but when i go ito directories..nothing there
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post #11 of 24
4/16/06 at 5:06pm
Thread Starter 
If i ever get this sorted out im not using file vault again
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post #12 of 24
4/16/06 at 6:25pm
The admin password can over ride FileVault for any account.
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post #13 of 24
4/17/06 at 5:06pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks to everybody for your help so far.

Situ so far is I have trashed my sparseimage file.

I have used sudo chown to transfer priveleges of corrupted user to another account. Is there anyway i can undelete the sparseimage.

Have tried disk repair using the url of the old sparseimage to recover to a destination file, but obviously the sparseimage is not there.

I dont mid so much losing the data, except we have 18 months of irreplaceable photos which now seem to be lost.

Any further help greatly appreciated.
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post #14 of 24
4/17/06 at 6:25pm
Call Apple. Now.

Seriously...they can help you even if for a small fee (if its not under warentee still)
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post #15 of 24
4/17/06 at 7:13pm
Quote:
Originally posted by matracer
Thanks to everybody for your help so far.

Situ so far is I have trashed my sparseimage file.

I have used sudo chown to transfer priveleges of corrupted user to another account. Is there anyway i can undelete the sparseimage.

Have tried disk repair using the url of the old sparseimage to recover to a destination file, but obviously the sparseimage is not there.

I dont mid so much losing the data, except we have 18 months of irreplaceable photos which now seem to be lost.

Any further help greatly appreciated.

OK - forget the advice about looking in the Trash. You already looked there. What you need to get is the free copy of Data Rescue. You only have to pay if it finds restorable files.

And stop doing other stuff to the disk until you run Data Rescue. Every time you save a file, it could choose to save it over the freed space where the sparseimage is.

Data Rescue http://www.prosofteng.com/products/d...f3be2240bcbb67
--Johnny
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post #16 of 24
4/17/06 at 8:44pm
  • Ebby
  • RIAA's Most Wanted
I doubt that will work. The user folder is an encrypted disk image. There is little, if any, error correction. I'm afraid if one piece is overwritten, there is not enough redundancy to repair the damage and it will all be hosed. Because of the encryption, no amount of data recovery can even restore single files.
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post #17 of 24
4/17/06 at 9:53pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Ebby
I doubt that will work. The user folder is an encrypted disk image. There is little, if any, error correction. I'm afraid if one piece is overwritten, there is not enough redundancy to repair the damage and it will all be hosed. Because of the encryption, no amount of data recovery can even restore single files.

That's true for any deleted file - if any of the blocks are overwritten you lose data.

It just depends on how much gnashing of data he did after he deleted the FileVault image. If none of the blocks have been reused, he'll get it back.
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post #18 of 24
4/18/06 at 3:39am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the info.

Have run Data Rescue II and it has found the sparsefile in the trash along with a file called AuthenticationService.

both files are as follows .trash/501/.Matthew/Matthew.sparseimage
and .trash/0/AuthenticationService.

.sparseimage is 63.4gb and other is 632kb. I have 31 gb free on hd.

Which folder should i recover these to? Do i need another hard drive?

thanks for your help so far.
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post #19 of 24
4/18/06 at 10:23am
The safest route is to recover the file to an external volume, so there's no chance that you'll damage the original further during the restore process.

However, if the file isn't deleted and is just hiding in the other account's hidden trash directory, you have far less to fear and should be able to move it back using Terminal.

I haven't been following this whole discussion, but if you never successfully emptied your trash when the image was inside, the file is probably still safe and intact, just inaccessible. However, if you really did delete it, the integrity of the file is paramount and you should be doing all of this using some other machine via FireWire Target Disk Mode. As others have said, the more you use the machine, the more likely you will overwrite part of that file.
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post #20 of 24
4/18/06 at 12:09pm
Quote:
Originally posted by matracer
Thanks for the info.

Have run Data Rescue II and it has found the sparsefile in the trash along with a file called AuthenticationService.

both files are as follows .trash/501/.Matthew/Matthew.sparseimage
and .trash/0/AuthenticationService.

.sparseimage is 63.4gb and other is 632kb. I have 31 gb free on hd.

Which folder should i recover these to? Do i need another hard drive?

thanks for your help so far.

First see if it really is in the Trash. It's invisible so you will not see it from the Finder.

in Terminal, type

cd /
ls -la

And see if the directory ".Trashes" is listed. If so, type

cd .Trashes
ls -la

If it shows "501" repeat the same.
Then repeat for "Matthew".

And see if you see the "Matthew.sparseimage" file. If you do, then try

sudo mv Matthew.sparseimage ~/Desktop/recoveredMatthew.sparseimage


Or replace the "~/Desktop...." string with the appropriate path if using an external drive to copy to.

Then once you have the disk image you should be able to enter the master password to decrypt it.
--Johnny
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post #21 of 24
4/24/06 at 3:03pm
Thread Starter 
Hi everyone just to give you some feedback.

In the end i took it to an apple specialist who attempted to recover the file. The file was recovered but it appears the user account was damaged. He tried to sort it but couldn't. He also suggested that the sparse file was probably overwritten in areas.

So I bought an external drive for backup purposes and reinstalled my os.

Filevault has not been activated. Since doing a clean installation, the system feels more responsive.

I'm gutted about the lost photos and i will have to do my company accounts from scratch, but after all that I love my imac its an awsome machine. I have learnt my lesson not to mess with things i dont understand.

Thanks for all your help and advice.

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post #22 of 24
4/24/06 at 3:20pm
  • Ebby
  • RIAA's Most Wanted
I lost almost 30 GB of family photos almost a year ago, (May 2005) and NEVER want that to happen again. I feel your pain. What is worse: I printed a contact sheet of all 6,000+ so I have little one inch previews of everything I lost. Talk about salt in the wound!

I ran out the next week and bought a RAID5 system and I swear it is the easiest backup solution ever. I also have a Maxtor external drive with one of those backup buttons. I actually crack a smile when I push it. 250GB is a little cramped for me, so I changed the backup scripts to use my 700GB RAID and saved the 250GB for HDTV recordings.
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post #23 of 24
4/26/06 at 3:24pm
Thread Starter 
Ebby, 700 RAID5 how does it compare to the 250gb Hard disk in operation?

I bought a 250gb lacie drive for my back ups. Also found i couldn't use the hard drive and the camcorder at the same time on firewire
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post #24 of 24
4/26/06 at 3:48pm
  • Ebby
  • RIAA's Most Wanted
My RAID system uses SATS drives so it looks and behaves just like a normal internal hard drive. The drives never sleep and there is a slight performance hit because a dedicated processor calculates a parity for all the writes to the array. Overall, it is still faster than firewire, but honestly, I don't care about speed whatsoever. Cost will get you, but I went for a POSH drive bay from Granite Digital.

I solved your firewire problem by plugging the hard drive and camcorder into the two ports on my computer, not daisy-chaining them. You could try that to reduce latency. (I did this on a 400Mhz laptop)
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