Dear all,
I was prompted to update my laptop to Sierra and so I did. I followed all the prompts and when I saw click agree click yes blah blah of course I just clicked everything without actually reading any of that stuff as usual. The install did everything over the air and as it was late at night I just let it do its thing and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning I had a brand spanking new MacOS Sierra install on my computer. So far so good.
Then with horror I realised that I had lost all my old files. My thousands of emails from mail, my old iPhone backups with my tens of thousands of photos etc. IT WAS A BRAND SPANKING NEW MACOS INSTALL WITH NONE OF MY OLD FILES!! Herein lies the problem as I was actually expecting Sierra to install over my old OS without removing everything like old macos installs did but instead I got a clean install.
Now with some poking around I believe that MACOS is smart and it hasn't actually deleted my old files but they're all still there in the background as I realise that the existing space on my hdd is very small. I have a 500gb hdd and only 50gb remaining space so I'm guessing my files are all still there somewhere. I also see that there is a new user so I'm hoping all my old files are in the old user somewhere. I've clicked into it but I can't see anything. I know there are hidden files and stuff but I don't know how to find them and back them up or view them or anything.
Can someone please help me in the simplest of ways tell me how I can.
1) Find and backup my old iphone backups. I don't care about anything else except my photos. I still have my most recent ones on my iphone but a few months back I backuped everything onto my computer then I clean installed my iphone so hopefully all my old photos are on a backup file somewhere. Are there any apps or programs that can find old photos from backups and back them up? Paid apps, free apps, any sort of apps as long as they work?
2) If possible backup my old work emails from the backup somewhere and into my new mail. Because I don't save on my mail server just on my computer so basically now I've lost all my old emails. I would love to get these back but if I can't then just the photos will do.
3) I have a NAS that I want to backup my computer from now on so that this never happens again. How do I do this? I only know the old fashioned way of clicking on everything and dragging it over to save everything but is there a smarter way?
Thank you so very much if someone can help me with any of this. I don't mind paying for programs, apps etc to do any of the above as long as they definitely work for what I'm trying to do. THANKS!!
I was prompted to update my laptop to Sierra and so I did. I followed all the prompts and when I saw click agree click yes blah blah of course I just clicked everything without actually reading any of that stuff as usual. The install did everything over the air and as it was late at night I just let it do its thing and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning I had a brand spanking new MacOS Sierra install on my computer. So far so good.
Then with horror I realised that I had lost all my old files. My thousands of emails from mail, my old iPhone backups with my tens of thousands of photos etc. IT WAS A BRAND SPANKING NEW MACOS INSTALL WITH NONE OF MY OLD FILES!! Herein lies the problem as I was actually expecting Sierra to install over my old OS without removing everything like old macos installs did but instead I got a clean install.
Now with some poking around I believe that MACOS is smart and it hasn't actually deleted my old files but they're all still there in the background as I realise that the existing space on my hdd is very small. I have a 500gb hdd and only 50gb remaining space so I'm guessing my files are all still there somewhere. I also see that there is a new user so I'm hoping all my old files are in the old user somewhere. I've clicked into it but I can't see anything. I know there are hidden files and stuff but I don't know how to find them and back them up or view them or anything.
Can someone please help me in the simplest of ways tell me how I can.
1) Find and backup my old iphone backups. I don't care about anything else except my photos. I still have my most recent ones on my iphone but a few months back I backuped everything onto my computer then I clean installed my iphone so hopefully all my old photos are on a backup file somewhere. Are there any apps or programs that can find old photos from backups and back them up? Paid apps, free apps, any sort of apps as long as they work?
2) If possible backup my old work emails from the backup somewhere and into my new mail. Because I don't save on my mail server just on my computer so basically now I've lost all my old emails. I would love to get these back but if I can't then just the photos will do.
3) I have a NAS that I want to backup my computer from now on so that this never happens again. How do I do this? I only know the old fashioned way of clicking on everything and dragging it over to save everything but is there a smarter way?
Thank you so very much if someone can help me with any of this. I don't mind paying for programs, apps etc to do any of the above as long as they definitely work for what I'm trying to do. THANKS!!
