[t_hah]

I just installed iTunes 2. I was running 10.1 on my powerbook G4. I have three partitions. One was holding the OS 9, the second one OS 10.1, and the third one was for all my data, and OS X apps...I thought that it was secure that way.
After installing iTunes I did a restart...my third partition was completely wiped out. Nothing left on it. Blank.

I lost all my work pretty much I have done so far on the Mac...it is all gone.
Sad...

Anyone knows of some good data racovery tool for OSX?

Any helps would be much apreciated.


Thanks


t

ps.: right now I am running OS 9, because Explorer would not run in 10.1 any more...and all the otehr borwsers are gone.

[yuriwho]

Get DiskWarrior now! It will fix everything. Saved my ass several times in similar situations. You can even pay for it online and download it now.

Y

Originally posted by t_hah:
<STRONG>I just installed iTunes 2. I was running 10.1 on my powerbook G4. I have three partitions. One was holding the OS 9, the second one OS 10.1, and the third one was for all my data, and OS X apps...I thought that it was secure that way.
After installing iTunes I did a restart...my third partition was completely wiped out. Nothing left on it. Blank.

I lost all my work pretty much I have done so far on the Mac...it is all gone.
Sad...

Anyone knows of some good data racovery tool for OSX?

Any helps would be much apreciated.


Thanks


t

ps.: right now I am running OS 9, because Explorer would not run in 10.1 any more...and all the otehr borwsers are gone.</STRONG>

[Rob van dam]

cant agree more

[t_hah]

I tried DiskWarrior....I got the latest version...no luck.
The data is gone.


And it is gone from my backup disk...I mean from a disk, that I really took care of.

Apple messed something up with the installer. This is really bad.

I hope that not many people will have the same experience


t

[Cipher13]

It can't be that bad.

Get TechTool to sift through the drive, see what you come up.

Worst comes to worst?

I suggest you pull out the big guns; Data Rescue. If it can't recover your data.. you're ****ed.

[Jernberg]

I'm your buddy here.... I've had the same trouble: The iTunes 2 installer completely wiped all my partitions (EXCEPT the OS X partition). I am 100% sure it's the iTunes installer, because I was checking the disk prior to launching the iTunes 2 installer. The files get wiped during the "Checking Disks" process (which takes a loooong time on my system, about 20-30 seconds)". After this, the files are gone. I did not even go throught the whole installation process!

My help was (partly) TechTool 3.0.2. I did a "Scavenge disk" recovery. Problem is you must choose another drive to write the rescued data to.

After this, i have Norton Filesaver installed... I'm writing a _serious_ letter to Apple about this. Think about it: An Apple installer that wipes entire disks!!! Isn't that one of the worst flukes in Apple Software history???? Arrrrggghhh!

Dennis Jernberg
Running a G4 400 Mhz AGP with 2 harddrives in it. 384 MB RAM, OS X 10.1 (build G64).

Originally posted by t_hah:
<STRONG>I just installed iTunes 2. I was running 10.1 on my powerbook G4. I have three partitions. One was holding the OS 9, the second one OS 10.1, and the third one was for all my data, and OS X apps...I thought that it was secure that way.
After installing iTunes I did a restart...my third partition was completely wiped out. Nothing left on it. Blank.

I lost all my work pretty much I have done so far on the Mac...it is all gone.
Sad...

Anyone knows of some good data racovery tool for OSX?

Any helps would be much apreciated.


Thanks


t

ps.: right now I am running OS 9, because Explorer would not run in 10.1 any more...and all the otehr borwsers are gone.</STRONG>

[coke::Ti]

Geez, I am so glad it didn't happen to me!

I also have a PowerBook G4 with 3 partitions. Itune 2 installed fine. Its strange that the installation required a restart.

Good luck guys!

[scarab]

Nothing went wrong for me, except that my Mac OS 9 partition got a little screwed up.

[MacAgent]

Uhhhhh, I think I'll not install this just yet...

[Mikuro]

I highly recommend Data Rescue. I can't say if it'll work, because I was lucky enough to have read about all this before installing iTunes 2, but Data Rescue has saved my behind on several occasions when nothing else could help. I don't think there's an OS X version, but if your disks are formatted as HFS+ it should work fine running from OS 9. Of course, it might be a little hard to boot from OS 9 at this point...

You can get Data Rescue at http://www.wildbits.com/rescue/ . It's $40 shareware.

I really hope this helps.

[yuriwho]

Marcel Besnink (author of TinkerTool et al) posted on the apple forum that he may have found programming errors in the installer script. Sounds like these partitions have been rm -rf'ed. I think this will be very difficult to recover from. A huge mistake by apple! The thread in the apple forum has 40 posts and is growing!

[one]

Originally posted by t_hah:
<STRONG>I just installed iTunes 2. I was running 10.1 on my powerbook G4. I have three partitions. One was holding the OS 9, the second one OS 10.1, and the third one was for all my data, and OS X apps...I thought that it was secure that way.
After installing iTunes I did a restart...my third partition was completely wiped out. Nothing left on it. Blank..</STRONG>

t_hah -

Sorry for your grief, but kbahjat over @ versiontracker suggests the following:

Anyone having permission problems, or thinking they lost a hard drive: Logout, then login as ROOT. Hopefully you can now see all contents of your hard drive again. Go to your hard drive(s), right click and select Show Info. Go to Privileges in the drop down. Change the selection EVERYONE to READ & WRITE. Click Apply to All Enclosed Folders. Wait while it copies the privileges. Now logout and login as yourself. See if that resurected your data

[CharlesS]

Anyone still have the installer lying around? I'd like to have a look at it. I'm writing a program that's basically a safe way to extract files out of .pkg packages, kind of like TomeViewer in OS 9, and this would be the ultimate test of my program to see how well I'm doing so far.

[Angus_D]

Why the **** can't apple fix their goddamned good-for-nothing installer piece of crap?

[Captain Canuck]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>Anyone still have the installer lying around? I'd like to have a look at it.</STRONG>

I uploaded a copy of it to the public folder of my iDisk: "chrisstearns"

For the record: I'm running OS 10.1 on one partition and have had NO problems - in fact I'm listening to iTunes 2 right now. So far the only problems we've seen are with multiple partition setups.

This is a very serious problem.

[minimansion]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>Anyone still have the installer lying around? I'd like to have a look at it. I'm writing a program that's basically a safe way to extract files out of .pkg packages, kind of like TomeViewer in OS 9, and this would be the ultimate test of my program to see how well I'm doing so far.</STRONG>

i still have both of them. send me your email address. or a way to send them to you.

minimansion

[gsfprez]

i didn't realize i had to de-install (delete) iTunes 1. The installer caused my first and only Mac OS X (from mac os x public beta) kernel panic.

i restarted, deleted iTunes, and ran the installer. everything seems fine now - i am running on a 20 gig HD with 2 partitions and it seems okay.

why the hell should iTunes be a .pkg? Its an app, damnit.

[t_hah]

Well,


No data rescuing app could bring may data back. I was up almost all night (probably anyone would do the same if they would have just lost 6 months of work). This is just plain bad!

I tried DiskWarrior, tried DataRescue...tried Norton, TechTool Pro. Nothing works. It looks like the drive is completely wiped out.

Can you imaging loosing a gig and a half just by intalling iTunes. I could never believe such thing can happen.
I pretty much lost all my work.



How is this possible?
I mean we are talking about Apple, right?


t

[pkatt]

Must be a problem with multiple partions. I have everything on one and it worked fine. Usually people say that it's bad to have 1 partition, but I'm sure glad I do know!

[Jerome]

So far the only problems we've seen are with multiple partition setups.

I have two partitions and everything is fine... I feel lucky!


[ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: Jerome ]

[twitch]

I got iTunes2 from an IRC channel, and I installed it on my G3 300 Beige DT with 4 partitions and it workes fine and didnt erase any data that I know of. Maybe I got a previous build or something. Dont know, but it works perfect.

[OverclockedHomoSapien]

Just installed it this morning, no serious problems. I have three partitions on the HD that X is on, and iTunes 2 installed fine.

The only problem I have noticed is that G-Force doesn't display a centered display on full screen mode. Annoying, but hardly of the same caliber as the horrific things spoken of in this thread.

I must say, Apple really outdid themselves with iTunes 2...it rocks! The sound enhancer is very nice, and of course the EQ is what I've been waiting for. All in all an excellent product, if Apple can get the installer running right.

[oranjdisc]

Wow. This is really screwed up. I see that Apple pulled the OSX installer too. It's one thing to screw up something that's replaceable, but to erase entire partitions is just ludicrous. I smell a lawsuit!

I came out fine though, on both my iBook and G4 tower.

[t_hah]

So can someone tell me please what is there to do now? Should I call Apple? I mean I downloaded their newest iTunes package, and iTunes is supported over OSX.1. Or it was when it came out right? Especially on a Ti Powerbook.

I spend about 70 bucks on getting DiskWarrior, and it didn't even help me out.

Any suggestins, on where to go from here?

Thanks


t

[John Strung]

A suggested fix for the data loss problem has been posted on one of the MacFixit Forums. I can't say if it works:

"Anyone having permission problems, or thinking they lost a hard drive: Logout, then login as ROOT. Hopefully you can now see all contents of your hard drive again. Go to your hard drive(s), right click and select Show Info. Go to Privileges in the drop down. Change the selection EVERYONE to READ & WRITE. Click Apply to All Enclosed Folders. Wait while it copies the privileges. Now logout and login as yourself. See if that resurected your data."

[Sine]

I have a feeling your HD was hosed to begin with. Buying a good disk tools software should be the first thing you do when you buy a computer.. not something you do after your HD screws up.

[InterfaceGuy]

I downloaded it this morning and installed and have had no problems. iTunes 2 is great! I have 3 partitions. One for X, one for 9, and one for documents. Installed and restarted with no problems. But now I'm paranoid and am checking make sure I'm not missing anything.

[John Strung]

Where did you get that high horse, Sine?

[t_hah]

I totally agree with you Sine.

That is why I had norton and TechTool Pro laying around. It DID NOT help!

It just seems like the installed did some for of a reformatting on my drive. It is totally unacceptable.

Many people would not buy a hard disk tool software, because they just want to trust their computer. I know that crap happens, but if you thnik about it wiping out your drive is a little more than crap. That is totally brutal.

Does anyone know an email address at Apple where I could send some of my thought to?


Thanks


t

Originally posted by Sine:
<STRONG>I have a feeling your HD was hosed to begin with. Buying a good disk tools software should be the first thing you do when you buy a computer.. not something you do after your HD screws up. </STRONG>

[ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: t_hah ]

[dn15]

Sorry to hear about everyone else's problems. My installation went fine. I have one partition with both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.

[escher]

Originally posted by t_hah:
<STRONG>Any suggestins, on where to go from here?</STRONG>

I feel terrible for you, t_hah.

I would give Tekserve a call. I have heard that they do great hardware recovery. It may not be a cheap solution, but it would presumably be worth it to get back 6 months worth of work.

In the future, always back up your data. (I don't mean to be patronizing. I've lost important data because I didn't back up as well. But I back up my data more often now.)

I sure hope Apple compensates people who lost entire drives to iTunes 2 in some way or another. Even if you don't get anything, I would make sure to call Apple support and escalate this incident to the highest level possible. Write to Steve Jobs' office as well.

Escher

[ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: escher ]

[WiseWeasel]

I have 4 partitions on 2 drives in my G4/466 tower w/ 512 MB RAM and OS 10.1. Everything is fine after installing iTunes 2, including all permissions and data. I thank the stars that I didn't lose any data, and am very disappointed that Apple could let something like this slip through and cause so much damage. On another note, I opened the package's contents and looked at the scripts, and cannot find where it could have done an rm -rf to an entire volume anywhere. Hopefully, there will be a way to recover the data. Also, Apple would be very willing to compen$ate you for your troubles if you do lose data. . . ask them for a new top of the line PB G4, or a dual 800 G4 tower to go along with your current laptop to get over the grief a bit.

[neocyberdude]

I installed it with no major catastrophe. I did notice a file called "&gt;" was created at the root of my OS X partition. It was owned by root. I deleted it.

I have the following setup: Beige G3 MT w/ 2 HD's. One has 3 partitions, the other is all one volume. I don't know why some people lost everything and others didn't...

[moki]

Originally posted by t_hah:
<STRONG>I just installed iTunes 2. I was running 10.1 on my powerbook G4. I have three partitions. One was holding the OS 9, the second one OS 10.1, and the third one was for all my data, and OS X apps...I thought that it was secure that way.
After installing iTunes I did a restart...my third partition was completely wiped out. Nothing left on it. Blank.
</STRONG>

You haven't lost any data. I know it looks like you have, but nothing has been deleted.

What the installer did is it erroneously set the permissions on your files so you can't see them. You can boot to OS 9 and all of your files will be there.

Alternately, you can open up Terminal and do this:

sudo chmod -R a+r /volumes/partition_name

(where partition_name is the name of the partition that has lost files on it)

[ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: moki ]

[Kon-El]

Okay, I keep seeing the suggestion of:

"Anyone having permission problems, or thinking they lost a hard drive: Logout, then login as ROOT. Hopefully you can now see all contents of your hard drive again. Go to your hard drive(s), right click and select Show Info. Go to Privileges in the drop down. Change the selection EVERYONE to READ & WRITE. Click Apply to All Enclosed Folders. Wait while it copies the privileges. Now logout and login as yourself. See if that resurected your data."

But haven't heard of anybody trying it? Has this aleved anyone's problems yet?

T'ah I really feel for you. I hope the above suggestion works. As for the snide comment about Sine someone made, Sine's "high horse" is called Good Sense.

[sniffer]

I am using one of the copies which have been floating around on Carracho lately. I have tree partitions on my 45 gigs hd, with equal sizes. I read trough the readme and removed the original version of iTunes before installing, and everything seems to be just fine. Those of you which had problems, did you remove the original copy of iTunes before installing?
BTW, it is terrible that some of you lost so much important data.. I almost wish that it happened to me rather than you guys, since my important data is basicly only a huge mp3 collection (and some apps..), and not job related. I know very well how frustrating it can be..

[sheer]

2 drives here
1 (10g) for 9.2.1 - iTunes2 installed and happy on here
1 (40g) with 3 partitions for OSx10.1/Storage/Work - iTunes2 installed and happy on 10.1 partition
No problems during installation with X version. Guess I'm lucky

[t_hah]

Hello moki,


I tried the terminal trick. It did not work. I have been running under OS 9 for a while...and I could not recover anything from there either. I tried looking just plain with ResEdit, but no invisible directories were on the volume. (other than the usual Desktop files) As I said I tried TechTool Pro right away...then Norton 6. Then I bought DiskWarrior online, and got Data Rescue as well. Everything is gone!


What does support exactly mean? Does it mean that if Apple wipes my data out, they will help me out too?


t

Originally posted by moki:
<STRONG>

You haven't lost any data. I know it looks like you have, but nothing has been deleted.

What the installer did is it erroneously set the permissions on your files so you can't see them. You can boot to OS 9 and all of your files will be there.

Alternately, you can open up Terminal and do this:

sudo chmod -R a+r /volumes/partition_name

(where partition_name is the name of the partition that has lost files on it)

[ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: moki ]</STRONG>

[ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: t_hah ]

[David Shaw]

I have a 20 GB drive, partitioned for OSX , swap, and OS9. I also have a 30GB drive for MP3s and downloads. All made it through the installation intact.

I would suggest going into a terminal, typeing "sudo -s", then looking at the contents of the volumes in "/Volumes" and see if the data is still there.

[supernature]

Can anyone give me a copy of the original OS X iTunes 2 that was posted? I'd like to run the installer to see what happens. Or if I don't feel like reinstalling a wiped our hard drive, I want to read the installer pkg to see what it's exactly doing. you can email it to [email protected].

Otherwise, no big deal... just curious to see what happens on my machine.

[moki]

Originally posted by t_hah:
<STRONG> tried the terminal trick. It did not work. I have been running under OS 9 for a while...and I could not recover anything from there either. I tried looking just plain with ResEdit, but no invisible directories were on the volume. (other than the usual Desktop files) As I said I tried TechTool Pro right away...then Norton 6. Then I bought DiskWarrior online, and got Data Rescue as well. Everything is gone!
</STRONG>

Contact me privately at:

[email protected]

I'll see if I can help you out.

[rworne]

I just received my new Dual G4 from Apple yesterday afternoon, and loaded iDVD2 and iTunes2 (OS9 and OS X versions) last night. Everything went without a hitch. The machine was left pretty much as it came from Apple, no extra partitions or anything.

Robert

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Captain Canuck:
<STRONG>

I uploaded a copy of it to the public folder of my iDisk: "chrisstearns"

For the record: I'm running OS 10.1 on one partition and have had NO problems - in fact I'm listening to iTunes 2 right now. So far the only problems we've seen are with multiple partition setups.

This is a very serious problem.</STRONG>

Thanks a bundle! Or a package bundle, as the case may be. I'm downloading it now.

[Hologrammer]

I dl'd it this morning and loaded it onto my pismo 500 with 2 partitions OSX & OS9.2.1 on 1 and OS9.2.1 on the other. All went fine. Maybe this has some thing to do with more than 2 partitions?? I feel for you guys though, just can't reach ya only kidding this is a major f up I just hope they figure it out quick.
Oh yea and I know this is a good reminder why to read the readme but I have to admit I didn't and therefore did not remove old itunes

[ 11-03-2001: Message edited by: Hologrammer ]

[JonahLee]

I followed the installers instructions, and deleted iTunes from my OS X partition first (i had to use the terminal and "rm -r" to delete the app) and I have no problems on my tower or my laptop, and both computers have 3 partitions each.

[lfrancis]

I didn't have the data loss (I trashed the old version before installing, perhaps that's the key?), but the new version won't run, console reports "Launch failed with error code -2857".

Anyone know where I can get the prev version? Doesn't seem obvious on Apple's site...

[griffman]

Here's my theory, stolen directly off my site :-). For those of you affected, please respond to the three questions about the conditions that I think caused the problem.

-rob.

---

Thanks to a tip in an email about the cause of the problem (spaces in volume names), I went digging into the package installer and think I found the source of the problem. The following code is in a file called 'preflight' inside the iTunes.pkg installer (in Contents/Resources):

# if iTunes application currently exists, delete it
if [ -e $2Applications/iTunes.app ] ; then
rm -rf $2Applications/iTunes.app 2&lt; /dev/null
fi

So what's the problem? If your volumes have spaces and are named similarly (let's say "Disk", "Disk 1", and "Disk 2"), then this bug could bite you. The '$2' variable that's passed in contains the path to your selected iTunes installation destination. In our example, let's assume it was headed for "Disk 1". So '$2' should contain /Volumes/Disk\ 1 (notice the backslash for the space). However, if it instead contained /Volumes/Disk 1, then the "rm -rf" command would execute TWICE. It would look like this:

rm -rf /Volumes/Disk 1/Applications/iTunes.app 2&lt; /dev/null

One of the commands (the second half, 'rm -rf 1/Applications/iTunes.app') would probably not do anything, since the path is invalid. The second command, though, could be brutal. 'rm -rf /Volumes/Disk' would delete the entire volume 'Disk' used in this example.

For those that had a problem, do you meet all the following criteria?

1. Did not delete iTunes 1.1
2. Had multiple volumes
3. Had similarly named volumes with spaces in their names

Any replies could help determine if this is, indeed, the cause of the problem.

I can't see how the "$2" variable is built, so this is all conjecture based on the evidence and looking at the "preflight" file. Obviously, there's an issue with the installer, since Apple has now pulled it ... but if you grabbed it already, I would highly recommend you do not use it, even if you don't appear to meet the criteria listed above. Just wait for a new installer from Apple, and keep your data safe!

[PatGmac]

Originally posted by supernature:
<STRONG>Can anyone give me a copy of the original OS X iTunes 2 that was posted? I'd like to run the installer to see what happens. Or if I don't feel like reinstalling a wiped our hard drive, I want to read the installer pkg to see what it's exactly doing. you can email it to [email protected].

Otherwise, no big deal... just curious to see what happens on my machine.</STRONG>

I put it on my iDisk.

username: patgmac

[moki]

Originally posted by griffman:
<STRONG>
# if iTunes application currently exists, delete it
if [ -e $2Applications/iTunes.app ] ; then
rm -rf $2Applications/iTunes.app 2&lt; /dev/null
fi
</STRONG>

Ouch. This is a serious problem -- I've also seen the permissions problem, too though. It looks like the installer scripts are fairly hosed.

[supernature]

thanx... will post anything if anything happens or I find out something. Otherwise, to me, it sounds like the files are definitely hosed, and you'll need some kind of disk utility to retrieve it... i don't know what, but if there's a will there's a way...

excuse the cheese.