[steveismyman]

Hi,

A friend of mine switched host today for his domain. For some reason he decided to delete all his accounts in mail.app to setup anew - not realizing (and ignoring the warning) that this would also remove ALL the mails he had popped during the years with his old host from his local harddrive.

He has made no backup of his library, hasn´t made any copies of the mails to "On my Mac" in mail.app and hasn´t popped them to another client. The old hosting company has no backup.

Is there some magic way of getting the .mbox files back (that used to reside in the library)? Or is all lost? Is there anything to be done?

[CatOne]

Originally posted by steveismyman:
Hi,

A friend of mine switched host today for his domain. For some reason he decided to delete all his accounts in mail.app to setup anew - not realizing (and ignoring the warning) that this would also remove ALL the mails he had popped during the years with his old host from his local harddrive.

He has made no backup of his library, hasn´t made any copies of the mails to "On my Mac" in mail.app and hasn´t popped them to another client. The old hosting company has no backup.

Is there some magic way of getting the .mbox files back (that used to reside in the library)? Or is all lost? Is there anything to be done?

There are 'undelete' applications available. Tech Tool maybe? The less he does on his machine right now, the better because once the files are overwritten (initially they're just erased, not written over), they're gone for good. As such, he should probably install the app on an external HD and run it from there.

But reallyl... no backup, no nothing, deleting all accounts... WTF how dumb is your friend?