HD damaged/folders missing - tried everything!

[meta-ghost]

Help!
I was trying to install a software update and had to restart my machine a few times cause of some sort of conflict. Well, when i went back to one of my users accounts, all of the items in the Documents folder were missing. Library, Pictures,... and everything else was ok.

1) Ran Disk First Aid. - it said HD was damaged. Tried repairing and got the message:
"Repair attempted on 2 volumes
1 HFS volume repaired
1 volume could not be repaired"
Then it said something like a few folders had been moved into a "lost + found" directory.

2) ran fsck - fy. it didn't notice anything unusual.

3) bought and ran Disk Warrior (rebuilt directory) it made some minor changes but didn't solve my problem.

One question I have is: Did Disk First Aid recover my folders to a place that I can locate them (maybe through the Terminal)?

Is there anything else i can do (other than the obvious of sending the drive for repair)?

thanks.

 

[scan300]

open your terminal and list the contents of your root directory:
ls -l /

The 'lost & found' directory usually pops up when you have a filesystem corruption. I'm not sure what you'll find in there.

Don't do too many writes to you hard disk as this may overwrite file fragments you want ot recover if you are going to take your disk to a disk recovery centre.

 

[meta-ghost]

open your terminal and list the contents of your root directory:
ls -l /

so what the heck is "ls -l /" ? is it "1s space dash 1 space /" ?
i've played a little with the terminal but not too proficient.
thanks.

 

[Mechcozmo]

I cannot help you here, but in the future, verify the permissions through Disk Utility (not off of a CD, through Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility).



May the Force be with you. Good luck in your recovery.

 

[scan300]

so what the heck is "ls -l /" ? is it "1s space dash 1 space /" ?
i've played a little with the terminal but not too proficient.
thanks.

<el><es><space><hyphen><el><space><backslash>

or just select the text from the browser, paste it into your terminal and hit return.

ls means list.
-l means long format
/ means your root directory

If a lost&found directory exists, then you would "ls -l /lost&found"
(i've never seen the lost& found directory, so I don't know the literal spelling)

If there are files inside that you want, then use the "cp" (copy) command to copy the files to another directory.

You can find instructions on these commands by typing "man <command>"
(man means manual) eg "man ls" or "man cp"
(don't type the quotes)