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drewcifer · Jul 28, 2006, 02:07 AM

My worst nightmare has happened. I'm upset enough to cry right now.

I was playing solitaire on a freeware app, then i went to launch firefox with quicksilver like i do 100 million times a day. All of a sudden, quicksilver freezes. I'm like oh, this is strange, hmf. I cant force quit the program so i just restart the machine.

When the machine boots up. EVERYTHING IS GONE!!!! Its like my computer was rolled back to day 1!!! None of my applications are set up. All of itunes music is gone, address book: gone, bookmarks: gone, virtually all files and settings have been erased!!!!!!

Whats happened? WTF did i do? Is there anyway to restore it?

Oh my god i cant believe this happened to me. You all know how it is, ive been tweaking and building this computer since i got it months ago. What about all my files?

stwain2003 · Jul 28, 2006, 02:16 AM

is the heard drive space still registered as taken up? because something similar happened to my friend and he "lost" all of his data, but he took it into apple and they got it all back

drewcifer · Jul 28, 2006, 02:20 AM

the space taken up is the same as it was before... im pretty sure.

so yes its still registering it as taken up.

pheonixash · Jul 28, 2006, 04:32 AM

Originally Posted by drewcifer

the space taken up is the same as it was before... im pretty sure.

so yes its still registering it as taken up.

Umm...did you change your short username in the finder??

mduell · Jul 28, 2006, 07:51 AM

If you haven't changed your short username recently, then restore from backups... you do have backups?

drewcifer · Jul 28, 2006, 10:09 AM

oh, uh, yes i did change my name next to the home icon on the finder.... but its already back to what it was... how do i fix?

drewcifer · Jul 28, 2006, 10:13 AM

in the finder next to that folder with the picture of a house on it, i changed the name there. But now its back to what it was before i changed it, and all my data is still gone.

drewcifer · Jul 28, 2006, 10:17 AM

I think this is a problem with the OS. Why would it let people change that if its going to have these results??

iREZ · Jul 28, 2006, 11:09 AM

why not try archive and installing?

CatOne · Jul 28, 2006, 11:27 AM

Originally Posted by drewcifer

in the finder next to that folder with the picture of a house on it, i changed the name there. But now its back to what it was before i changed it, and all my data is still gone.

Try rebooting again after you do this.

CatOne · Jul 28, 2006, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by drewcifer

I think this is a problem with the OS. Why would it let people change that if its going to have these results??

It's not really a problem... just don't do that.

RevEvs · Jul 28, 2006, 01:02 PM

Originally Posted by CatOne

It's not really a problem... just don't do that.

It is a problem. You cant expect normal sers to know the effects of this. There should be a warning - or it should ask for the admin password etc.

RevEvs · Jul 28, 2006, 01:03 PM

Oh and to answer you problem - it seem like its just lost track of your home folder. if changing the name back and restarting didn thelp. make a new user then copy over all the files from your home

amazing · Jul 28, 2006, 02:55 PM

Here's some Apple support docs that should help you, namely relating to having changed your shortname. Hopefully, following the steps will get you back to where you were. Please report back on the results.

1. Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4 or later: Return to default desktop, apparent "loss" of home directory
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854

2. Mac OS X: How to change user short name or home directory name
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106824

drewcifer · Jul 28, 2006, 05:23 PM

I finally was able to get it fixed, thanks to everyone who helped me out.

This whole fiasco has scared the snot out of me, so I bought a western digital mybook 320gb 7200 rpm external hard drive for backups. It was 160 dollars shipped from dell.com.

Thanks again.

shabbasuraj · Jul 29, 2006, 01:01 PM

Data loss is a 'when' and not an 'if'.