[iMacfan]

Hi,

I have accidentally overwritten a file on my desktop that I have to retrieve. How do I do this - I have no special software.

Thanks,

david

[cambro]

If you've actually overwritten the file, then you are pretty much SOL without some fancy data recovery technology that can read latent magnetic fields on the disk.

When you "wipe" a disk you write a bunch of times over it. This not only deletes the part of the disk that tells the drive where every file is actually located, it also physically writes new data to the whole of the drive. This is also what secure empty trash does..it removes the file from the drive directory (normal delete procedure) and then overwrites the file space on the drive physically with garbage or 0s or whatever so that you can't put the 'deleted' file back together again (secure delete part).

If you just deleted your file, then there is hope because all those 1s and 0s are still there and you just have to find them and put them in the right order.

Good luck...

[effgee]

uh oh!

not good - I know of one (remote) possibility to recover some of the data - if it was a text file of some kind (word, mail, etc.) you were working on.

Years ago, I had a similar problem and found a little utility called "Search & Rescue" that can read out data from your computer's RAM. Using this app, I was able to recover a good part of the text I had lost.

Now come the bigger problems:
First, this app is OS 9 only, so it would be good if your computer was capable of booting into OS 9. I don't know if it would work from within the Classic environment.
Second, the download site seems to be down see here on macupdate.com - but you might be able to find it elsewhere on the web by doing a search for the file name.
Third, with the dramatic changes in RAM technology over the past few years, I have no clue of this app can read data from a recent memory chip - I haven't used it since the incident mentioned above.

It's kind of a long shot but might be worth a try - hopefully someone has a better/easier solution to offer.

good luck,

eff

[iMacfan]

Thanks everyone for the quick responses - I found the vital text in a mangled file. The problem was that my USB flash drive was getting fragmented, and so it mangled and only partially copied the vital folder when I copied it across this morning to the flash drive. This evening, I copied the folder back, overwriting the OK version on my computer.

I have now reformatted the USB drive.

Can anyone recommend a simple and cheap (or free!) app to backup my files?

Thanks,

David

[Orion27]

Yes. I'ts called Finder and came with your Mac..

[effgee]

iMacfan,

glad you got your file back I know the feeling. For backup apps click here for a Macupdate listing, sorted by license. Scroll down a bit to see all the "free" and "shareware" solutions.

I personally use Retrospect - more out of habit than anything else. I would recommend taking a closer look at "Carbon Copy Cloner", it has a scheduling function and in my experience it's a very reliable app. And when it comes to backups that's more important than a glitzy user interface

cheers,

eff

[iMacfan]

Hey!

I know what the finder is!

What I meant to ask was, is there an app that will backup the new/altered files to CD/DVD?

David

[effgee]

okie, let's talk backup strategy

for the sake of the example below, we'll assume that you have a DVD burner (CD will work, too) and that you work a lot on your computer:

1. Get three DVD-RW's
2. Download and install "Carbon Copy Cloner" (CCC)
3. Using CCC, make one backup disk image of your User folder. If you have tons of movies and mp3's, set CCC to create several disk images as needed (and get extra DVD-RW's for this backup) it will do so automatically.
4. Repeat this backup every 2 weeks by overwriting the DVD(s)
5. Using CCC, create a second backup disk image of the following folders: Documents, Library, Pictures (if you're a slacker like me and have a lot of files on the Desktop include that, too) and any other folders you have important docs in. Repeat this once a week on Tuesdays.
6. Create a disk image identical to the one above to be burnt on DVD #3 and repeat this backup every Friday

This way you'll always have a relative recent (max. 2 weeks old) backup of your entire User folder plus with the other two backup sets, even if one of the DVD's should go bad (unlikely), you'll still have the second one and no files older than 7 days will ever be lost.

Depending on how much work you do on your machine and how valuable your data is, you can repeat the steps above as often or as rarely as necessary.

BTW, all the DVD (CD) images crated by CCC can be burnt to the appropriate media using the Finder's burn function.

Have fun + cheers,

eff

P.S. There are of course more convenient forms of backups (Retrospect + tape drive would be one example) but they're usually quite expensive. Also, I would stick to at least one backup set on optical media (DVD/CD). A backup on an external hard drive is better than no backup, but recent events with Panther + FireWire have shown quite clearly that this is not the safest route to go.

[iMacfan]

Thank you - an extremely helpful post.

David