Oh my God - -everything has disappeared

Help! I just ran a back-up of my entire computer and seem to have transferred, rater than copied, its contents. I backed it up to an external LaCie hard drive, and -and went I went in to check on it there was an error message that wouldn't go away. Something about the "Palm Background." So I restarted the computer, and when it booted up, it was virtually empty. Almost all of my documents and applications are gone. It booted up as if I had never used it before -- I got the Start-Up Assistant. Aaah!

It looks as if it has been transferred onto the external hard drive, rather than backed up to it But how do I get it re-installed? It won't just copy over. What do I do? I am totally freaking out.

thank you

Did you use Time Machine or did you just drag and drop all your copies into the hard drive? What model of Mac are you using, which operating system, etc?

No backup program that I know of will remove the original data after it's been backed up. What exactly did you do? And what program did you use to backup? It sounds like you may have moved the data rather than backing it up? Are you sure there is nothing on your hard drive? Are you logged into your original account?

It's a G (Power PC) , running Tiger. I used the LaCie backup software.
As for how I'm logged in, yes, I'm logging in as always.

I ran First Aid in Disk Utility, and see that the drive is damaged. Should I take it in to Apple? I don't have Disk Warrior, and am not sure how to recover the lost data.

thank you

I ran First Aid in Disk Utility, and see that the drive is damaged. Should I take it in to Apple? I don't have Disk Warrior, and am not sure how to recover the lost data.

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The hard drive probably needs to be replaced. Once you replace it with a new one you can reload the operating system and then use your LaCie backup you made to recover everything.

You will need to use you original Tiger disks so be sure to have them on hand.

If you would post the exact year and model of your PPC G machine, we can help you find a new hard drive and supply you with instructions on how to change it out yourself. Taking it to Apple is an option but it may be expensive, however, if you think you can't do the work yourself, then that might be best.

Let us know.

Thanks so much for everybody''s help. Turns out it is/was a hard drive problem, and that in fact my automatic backup system hasn't be working right for months. So it is now at a data recovery place, awaiting further diagnostoc input.

Thanks to everybody for coming to my aid in this time of need.

Wow did you get a quote on data recovery costs before they proceed? Can run into thousand of dollars

Yes, thanks for your concern. I'm budgeting $500. More than that I think will be better spent on therapy...

laurahead108 said:

Yes, thanks for your concern. I'm budgeting $500. More than that I think will be better spent on therapy...

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Only if they have to disassemble the hard drive (remove platters and reassemble) will the cost be higher than $500.00. If it's a simple data recovery job (using specialized software) that may keep the cost down. Let's hope you don't have to make an appointment with your therapist.