Recover a deleted folder in Leopard
 

Hope someone can help me with this.

I have a first generation Macbook running Leopard. I believe I have inadvertantly deleted all pictures of my daughter (who just turned one) from 2007. I was transferring files to burn to disk and I think I put them in the trash. Then emptied the trash (ouch.)-- I did not use secure empty.

The good news: I have everything on my NAS as well as in a backup folder on my computer. I wish I could use Time Machine on a NAS, but that's a different issue. Guess Apple wants to push people towards buying Time Capsule...

I am certain that my inlaws or parents have the images on disk, as I have given them copies. In fact, I recovered everything from August on.

The reason I want to undelete that folder is that for whatever reason, when I copied the image files to the wireless drive, the dates get messed up. I'd like to be able to know exactly when each picture was taken. I know that's an option in XP, but I have not seen that in Leopard.

Anyone able to help? For what it's worth, I have not used the computer since I noticed the folder was gone, so I have written to the drive as little as possible, if at all, since it happened.

Thanks in advance.

fuzz

If you want to spend $100 on a solution, Data Rescue is the tool you want to use.

If you have another OS X Mac and a Firewire cable around, you can use this method:

• Shut down the Mac with the files you want to recover. We'll call this one "Recovery Mac."
  
• Connect Recovery Mac to the other Mac with a Firewire cable and mount the Recovery Mac in Target Disk mode by holding the "T" key on the keyboard while restarting it. You'll see what looks like a screensaver with the Firewire symbol when Target Disk mode has been activated on Recovery Mac.
  
• Use the Finder to search for the folder .Trash (Note the period before the folder name.) on the Recovery Mac volume from the other Mac.
  
• Double-click on the .Trash folder on Recovery Mac (one should appear for both machines). This will open a new window with your deleted files in it, if they are still available to recover.
  
• Drag the files you want to recover to some location on the other Mac where you can find them, just in case. This will make a copy on the other Mac
  
• Now Drag those same files from .Trash directly back to where they should have been and cross your fingers.
  
• Eject the Recovery Mac volume from the other Mac, unplug the Firewire cable from both Macs and restart Recovery Mac.
  
• You should find your missing files back in their previous, pre-Trash location. If you guessed wrong about their previous location and they're not there when you boot up Recovery Mac, try copying them over from the location you copied them to on the other Mac.

the dates the photos were taken are in the exif tags within the image itself and should show up in any application that can read them. i'm pretty sure iphoto shows it; aperture and lightroom definitely do. there are also scripts that can set the file creation/modification time of the file as seen in the finder to whatever the exif tag is.

if you have a complete backup, then there's no real need to bother with undeleting anything.

Re:
 

Data backup is a complete solution but if you have no backup then don't worry still data could be recovered .I would say can you try Stellar Phoenix Mac once,may be it will help you out as the software recovers data by its file name and folder size as well.Just try its free trial version first if you see your recoverable data on preview then go further to download full version otherwise not..

Doesn't help you now, but certain NAS systems can work as a Time Machine target for Macs. My MBP backs up to a Synology DS-210j NAS. It requires one tiny preferences change on the Mac, but that's it.

stellar phoenix is one of the worst recovery tools on the mac. not even worth the time to try it (and you don't want to be experimenting with a problematic drive either).

data rescue is one of the best recovery tools and disk warrior is amazing at fixing corrupted volumes (not relevant in this situation though).

that tiny preference change is enabling unsupported time machine volumes, which is not really a good idea. there's a reason why it's unsupported. most of the time it will work fine, but it's a backup! do you really want to be risking it?

pdxer........Stellar Phoenix works for me i don't know about your situation or in what circumstances you was,but the software gives me the handful of money back by providing great recovery of my files..

Agreed. Being cheap, I tried creating my own TC with my NAS, and the connection did not always stay up between backups. By contrast, Time Capsule connectivity is really persistent. I'm on the road for a week, I come home and the TC "just works". It's expensive, and it's worth it.

Don't be a wimp. :D

It's never not worked for me. Besides, everything I have that's really critical (photos, important docs, etc) is backed up in 2+ additional locations (at least one outside the house). TM is just the most convenient way to keep backed up.

Actually, the most recent revisions of their NAS software don't even require you to use the "unsupported volumes" feature, as long as you connect using AFP.

i found out about stellar phoenix after they repeatedly spammed a couple of other forums, so my initial impression was already not good. however, i was curious, so i tried it.

it turns out that it required the root account to be enabled and the user logged in as root! that is both stupid and very dangerous, especially with a problematic drive attached. what an absolute crock.

not only is it a huge security hole, but it shows that they know very little about writing mac software. there is a proper way to authenticate and run with elevated privileges and enabling root and then logging in as root is not it. it's mind-boggling that anyone would even consider that approach, let alone actually release commercial software that did it.

it should be avoided for that reason alone, but there's more.

there were plenty of other problems with it too, including menu commands that didn't work correctly and windows that filled the entire screen, with only a couple of buttons or checkboxes in them and with an enormous amount of white space. if they can't get the easy stuff right, like creating a window that properly fits the content, how can one be sure they get the hard parts right, like recovering data?

it's rare i come across software as bad as that. very rare.

meanwhile, data rescue has been around for something like 15 years and is an outstanding product that works very, very well. prosoft bought it a while back from an independent developer and has improved what was already a very good product.

Re:
 

pdxer....That is not justified you like Data Rescue that is also good but i just used to tell my experience about Stellar Phoenix which i got satisfied to retrieve 2.5 GB of pictures and movies from a (virus) corrupted memory card that Mac OS X wasn't even capable to mount. The program worked quite perfectly even i got every single media file which was identified and recovered perfectly...

it's great that it worked for you but that doesn't excuse them from requiring root to be enabled and the user logged in as root, especially for users who don't understand the risks (i.e., average users). it's also evidence that they don't know how to properly write mac software.

there are much better alternatives, and i'm sure most, if not all of them, would have recovered the images.

for memory cards, i highly recommend photo rescue by a company called datarescue, oddly enough, which has no relation to prosoft engineering's data rescue.

The important thing to maximize success in a situation like this would be to stop using the computer until you recover the data, and in all your recovery attempts boot from an alternative drive or DVD. As you use the computer the space where your pictures are may be reused. DiskWarrior and Data Rescue are both good.

it's great that it worked for you but that doesn't excuse them from requiring root to be enabled and the user logged in as root, especially for users who don't understand the risks..

Yes i see one of the old Stellar Phoenix version having root account log-in but there was purely mentioned that you must have admin privileges so that you can log-in from root to access the external drive to retrieve deleted data.I think that was an additional option either you have to log-in from root then install the software and recover your data.or use the admin permissions to recover data from an external drive..I check out the most recent Stellar Phoenix Mac v4.0 which is quite efficient and supports snow leopard as well.there is no root account log-in in this version.