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pommehomme

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 3, 2010
5
4
Mac user since 1986, reasonably sophisticated. Yesterday I was working on my MacPro 2.66 GHz Xeon Quad Core with OSX.8, when I suddenly saw all of the files and folders I keep on the Desktop (about 23 GB worth) disappear. Gone. No warning. Nothing else is missing (Documents, Music, Pictures, etc.) I have a reasonable recent backup but still lost a LOT of stuff.

It is GONE. My backup Desktop was about 21 GB, my post-disaster Desktop is 371 MB (only my hard drives and shares.)

This is really depressing. I thought I had an adequate backup strategy, but nothing other than realtime sync would have helped me here. Also, this is very different from ANY problem I have ever had with a Mac--all OS included.

Any idea what happened. How could I inadvertently vaporize 23 GB of data, even if I wanted to. It would take a long time to move all of that to the trash--and this was gone in an instant.
 

Mr. Retrofire

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2010
5,064
519
www.emiliana.cl/en
It is GONE. My backup Desktop was about 21 GB, my post-disaster Desktop is 371 MB (only my hard drives and shares.)

This is really depressing. I thought I had an adequate backup strategy, but nothing other than realtime sync would have helped me here.
The original version of GraphicConverter 7.0 deleted all my files (700 GB) on one disk. This software used the preferences file from v6.x.x. I set the temporary file directory in GraphicConverter v6.x.x to a folder on my biggest disk. No problem in GC v6.x.x, because GC deleted only the temporary files in this folder. GC v7.0 erased all files on the specified disk, even if he should only delete his own temporary files.

It is probably not your fault-it is probably just a software bug in a third party software.
 

ScottCocoaBeach

macrumors newbie
Jan 25, 2009
2
0
I am having something similar happen - all files dissapear from both drives. I shut down and reboot and they are all back. Did you try a reboot and did you get them back? Any other solutions you found?
 

iShater

macrumors 604
Aug 13, 2002
7,027
470
Chicagoland
I have seen similar behavior on my system running Leopard, where my FileVaulted user would lose everything on the desktop, and a reboot would restore it.

Typically the files are there, but finder was not showing them for some reason.
 

pommehomme

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 3, 2010
5
4
Still a mystery

I am having something similar happen - all files dissapear from both drives. I shut down and reboot and they are all back. Did you try a reboot and did you get them back? Any other solutions you found?

I tried everything suggested and everything that I could think of. Luckily, I found them in one of my many backups, that happened to be performed just before they disappeared. I never did find the originals and now use a real-time backup solution called Backblaze--for$50/year it is cheap peace of mind.

I still wonder how something that catastrophic could have happened...
 
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