I was'nt sick or on vacation, but I've managed to erase my entire hard drive a week ago. My personal nightmare. Of course, we have learned (Japan), that there are far worse things, but to me it was enough. One might simply call it "the 7 steps of the disaster." I should delete my complete hard drive to solve a problem, I should first do a back-up with a time machine, which I did.
In retrospect, it is inexplicable that I have not checked again what was on my external back-up hard drive before I deleted. We will likely never know and can only be recorded under "How stupid can one be!" Restoring the back-up drive brought me the state from June 2009!
I knew that deleted data is not necessarily lost completely, so I called - again - on the Apple Support to get help how to get the data back.Meanwhile, I have also learned that you should not always listen to the advice of so-called experts!I spare you all intermediate disasters, but come to the point where I used the recommended "Disk Warrior" which I now learned is not in a position to restore deleted files because he "only" finds and repairs structural problems. This program was absolutely nothing.
Big THANKS to Apple Support at this point!
I had almost resigned to the fact that as a whole unplanned "new beginning" to look at a almost empty computer.Until I finally discovered on my own research on the internet "Data Rescue 3". This program is really awesome and if you stand yourself some time before the problem, I can only say: "buy".
I probably would still have saved a lot more data, if I would have used this programm in the first place, but at least I recovered a lot photos, etc. and I'm very, very happy.
The loss of pictures of my last exhibition would be very terrible to me or from the last holiday in Tunesia, where we went into the dessert close to the Algerian border, where I will probably never go again!
Although it will take me days (or weeks) to sort all out, because this programm finds everything, every picture of every internetpage you ever been! (Can you image?)
From this I learned several things:
1. Look after yourself well, all that is valuable for you
(people, animals you love and data that you need)
2. Do not trust blindly on advice from "experts",
but check everything twice and three times before you act.
3. If you are in panic, wait until at rest and go slow and considered before (fast acting in combination with second point leads to even more chaos)
4. Enjoy life (it can change quickly)
I wish you a very pleasant and calm weekend. Take care!
Barbara
