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lost email and other data
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bluemoon
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Nov 24, 2008, 06:43 PM
 
For security reasons I use an external drive with my Macbook, when I travel I leave the drive home and only take limited info with me.
Both the internal and the external hard drives contain the same bootable system (10.5.5) and differ only in the amount of data on them.
Now the external drive has developed a problem and I cannot boot with it, but I can still access some of the data on it.
My question is this, where do I find the email data, the address book data, the ical data, my bookmarks file?

Help will be greatly appreciated. Uwe
     
wataru
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Nov 24, 2008, 11:05 PM
 
It's all in your Library folder in your home folder. /Users/username/Library
     
besson3c
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Nov 25, 2008, 12:39 AM
 
If your email is IMAP based it resides on the server, and a local cached copy on your hard drive if your client is configured accordingly. The other stuff is in ~/Library, like wataru said.
     
bluemoon  (op)
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Nov 25, 2008, 02:22 AM
 
Thank you much for the help.
I could access the library folder and did find the calendar data which were entered without a hitch into the current calendar.
But I might need additional info with the other data.

I did not find anything regarding the bookmarks of firefox.

I did find mail data, but they seem not to want to seamlessly go back into the mail program, only as imports in a new folder, not the folder name they were filed under before. I have to admit I do not understand the file structure.

And no info/data on the address book data.

Uwe
     
Big Mac
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Nov 25, 2008, 04:39 AM
 
Firefox bookmarks are located at ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles (the ~ is in place of the name of your home folder).

I have never really had a problem transferring Mail folders from one installation to another. How did you do it? If you used the Import Mailboxes command inside of Mail, that would probably result in the issue you saw. Instead, move the contents of your backup Mail folder to ~/Library/Mail/ and it should restore your mailbox folders properly.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
OreoCookie
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Nov 25, 2008, 05:55 AM
 
You cannot extract and `reimplant' data like that with Mail and iCal. I suggest you take a different route, at least for sensitive data.

You can use Espionage, a small tool programmed by a fellow MacNNer. It encrypts directories and works well with all OS X apps and Time Machine. This way, you can keep your sensitive data (or the necessary parts of them) on your machine without compromising them when you lose your Mac. It uses safe encryption which is not crackeable with current technology and integrates with KeyChain. Of course, such a protection is only effective if you activate the option to have to enter a password after waking up your laptop. Even if a potential thief resets your password (s)he won't have access to your data unless they know the old keychain password (which hasn't changed!) or the password that unlocks the folder.

Have a look at the screencast that covers the integration of Espionage and Mail. You can do the same with iCal.
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bluemoon  (op)
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Nov 25, 2008, 09:00 AM
 
First of all thanks to BigMac, I will try those steps.
And secondly as an answer to OreoCookie, I am not trying to protect myself so much against loosing my laptop as trying toavoid the situation at the airport where a kind TSA agent says 'open your computer I will copy all the data'.
My guess is that if it were encrypted or otherwise password protected you would miss your flight, but if it is not on the computer, well then it ain't on the computer, right?
It may be a far fetched notion but keeping data separate seems a logical choice for me.

Uwe
     
wataru
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Nov 25, 2008, 05:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
You cannot extract and `reimplant' data like that with Mail and iCal. I suggest you take a different route, at least for sensitive data.
You can, but only if you replace the data folders and the preference files wholesale.
     
OreoCookie
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Nov 25, 2008, 06:33 PM
 
You're right. But I'm not sure how you'd `synk' them. It'd be a major PITA.
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turtle777
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Nov 25, 2008, 08:52 PM
 
Originally Posted by bluemoon View Post
And secondly as an answer to OreoCookie, I am not trying to protect myself so much against loosing my laptop as trying toavoid the situation at the airport where a kind TSA agent says 'open your computer I will copy all the data'.
You want to use IMAP, and leave NO copies on your local HD.
All the emails will be stored on your mails server.

Make sure to set up your email clients that way.

-t
     
besson3c
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Nov 26, 2008, 02:10 AM
 
You want to use IMAP anyway, it's much nicer than POP in just about every, if not every conceivable way.
     
bluemoon  (op)
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Nov 26, 2008, 11:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
You want to use IMAP, and leave NO copies on your local HD.
All the emails will be stored on your mails server.

Make sure to set up your email clients that way.

-t
I don't know anything about this, What is IMAP and how can I configure it??
     
besson3c
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Nov 27, 2008, 12:02 AM
 
Found this article with a Google search: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h.../en/ml944.html

(I don't mean that in a condescending way, it's just that there are numerous sites that explain this in better detail than what most of us could whip together. If you still come up short, a forum search might help you too - the question has been posed several times).
     
   
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