Random File Deletion

mrblack08

My friend just called me about her recently new MacBook. She had just finished up editing the school show and burned it to a DVD with popcorn. She was then going to rip it back to her computer so she wouldnt need to re-encode and such, she was using mac the ripper. It was about 3/4 the way through when the App froze and wouldnt respond. So she force quit the application and her MacBook restarted automatically. When it booted back up all of her documents were missing. He FCP files and Word and stuff so she is really upset. I'm not sure what to do but I hope you guys can help. Also the harddrive is saying the same amount of room is taken up after the reboot compared to before so it makes me think they are just hidden or missing.



-Thanks

--MrBlack08

rob05au

Which version of Mac The Ripper was she using?



She could of also made a image file of the DVD which would if needed later on be able to burnt to another DVD.

mrblack08

Quote:

Originally Posted by rob05au


Which version of Mac The Ripper was she using?



She could of also made a image file of the DVD which would if needed later on be able to burnt to another DVD.

2.66 The Most Current



She didn't know how to make an image but had MacTheRipper which was the easiest way to go for her.



Any ideas on recovering those files? Oh my god... I feel like im working with windows..

kickaha

Heh, it's not that bad.



A couple of things - 1) her home directory may have been 'misplaced'. I have a server at home with the home directory on an external drive. When things go wonky, sometimes (okay, twice in 7 years) the home directory 'disappears' - it logs me into a fresh clean directory on the boot drive, and ignores the external home directory. I'm assuming that's not the case here, but I thought I'd mention it. 2) is the computer set up to auto-login? 3) have you run Disk Utility to check the drive? 4) if you boot into single-user mode (careful, this is working without a net here) can you see what's in her /Users folder? ie, is her account still there? is there a new account that is unusual?

mrblack08

I am looking at it tomorrow, so I will look to see if I can locate other user folders or directories and let you guys know tomorrow.

marvin

I've seen files deleted like that before in OS X and it turned out they were not recoverable. If the available space is really the same as it was with the files then this may be different but they may well be gone. I never figured out why it happened.

mrblack08

I looked at it today and the files are still there, they are just in a different user folder for some reason, he home folder isn't the same. Problem is there are no other Users. Her "shortname' and her mac address got separated and now her home folder normally, "Godzilla" is empty and she has to go ~/MacBookHDD/Users/Katie/Documents



Is there anyway I can put her folder back where she wants it?

spamsandwich

What's this about burned popcorn? WTF...?



(I'm kidding!)

kickaha

er, wha?



Okay, on a hunch, try this. Open Terminal. In the shell window, enter 'pwd' and hit return. Then enter 'whoami' and hit return. Report back the results. I have a hunch...

mrblack08

edited.