OOPs I deleted the wrong file

I just got distracted for a second and deleted my projects folder and emptied the trash. I have no 3rd party disk utility programs available to me, but I will buy what I need. What do I need.
Thanx Barry

G4 dual 1 gig, 1 gig ram, panther 10.3 and FCP4.1

Unerase programs tend to be unreliable. You don't have any backups at all? Autosave?


www.derekmok.com

Thanx Derek for your response. No I don't have a current backup. While the Auto Save version is on another drive, it doesn't contain the last changes that I made. You don't think that disk warrior would work? We are going to buy a copy anyway, but I don't know if it will do what I'm needing. Barry

> You don't think that disk warrior would work? We are going to buy a copy anyway, but I don't
> know if it will do what I'm needing.

You haven't used DiskWarrior before, right? It's not an unerase application. DiskWarrior does only one thing, though it's an important one: It checks your disk directory for damage and repairs it if necessary. Great for external drives, especially (in my own experience, DiskWarrior is the #1 saviour of Lacie drives), but if you'd deleted the file, DiskWarrior won't be able to do it. Since it's not your drive that's going wrong, DiskWarrior can't do much about that, though it's an essential utility application to have around.

Norton has an Unerase application that' I've had some success with way back in the day, but I haven't done an unerase in years...hopefully other forum members will have more recommendations.

Check these old threads:

[www.lafcpug.org]

[www.lafcpug.org]


www.derekmok.com

If you are entertaining the idea of using an unerase application, or other data recovery method, STOP USING THE DRIVE RIGHT NOW! Any data you write to the disk will begin overwriting "deleted" areas, and there will very soon be nothing to recover no matter how sophisticated (or expensive) the method. This applies to just running the OS doing other things, not just using FCP.

Scott

They're not kidding when they say, "You cannot undo this action."

Unlike Windows, UNIX/OSX is constantly managing the hard drives. Once a portion of the drive becomes available through emptying the trash, it's stepped on almost immediately, whether you save something or not.

We went through all the steps with the current "undelete" programs and never got more than a very small fraction of the work back--and we were doing everything right.

Koz

I think that Koz is absolutely correct. It's an OSX thing.

You have no hope of retrieval except through your autosave.

And although I hate waiting for autosave to do it's thing every half hour or so, I have had cause to mop my brow and thank it.

Best

Harry

Thank you all for your input. Fortunately most of the project files were older and probably will never be resurrected. The one I really needed was in autosave on another drive and had most of the changes i did. I tried "Data Rescue" trial version[www.prosofteng.com] and pulled off one project (not the one I wanted) that seems to work fine. Unfortuneatley I can't justify the expense to retrieve something that will take me a couple of hours to reproduce. But again thank you for your help. Barry

> Unfortuneatley I can't justify the expense to retrieve something that will take me a couple of
> hours to reproduce.

Indeed. There's also no guarantee that even after buying the software that you would be able to retrieve the file you actually need.

Start implementing a system of manual backups. Pros shouldn't rely solely on Autosave. I manually backup my current project file to three locations on two separate media (the project drive and a USB flash drive that's not connected to the system as I work) every two hours, or whenever I've locked down on creative decisions for a segment. That's on top of Autosaves. Coupled with good file management, this backup system makes you nearly immune to loss of creative decisions.


www.derekmok.com