On My Mac mail question

Well, another fine mess I've gotten myself into. I was having lots of problems with my Apple Mail including MobileMe and my Time Warner (no comment) accounts. So I deleted MM and added it back in. It's now working, however my "on my mac" mail folders are gone. I had SO much saved in them!

And just to compound my idiocy, my back up drive failed about a week ago - my third LaCie with the infamous power problems, so I don't have a backup. Of course, even if I did, I would go back to the mail issues.

So - is there any way I can somehow find the folders? They've got to be on here somewhere! Any help would be enormously appreciated. Thanks!

Sorry to hear of your dilemmas. About the only thing I can suggest for now is to use recovery software. The best in my opinion is Data Rescue 3 but it's a bit pricey at $99. You can download a trial copy to see if it will work to find your mail folders before buying.

A couple of notes of caution: If possible, do not use your hard drive until you recover the folders. Any writing to the hard drive could overwrite the folders. Also, recovery software should be run from either an external hard drive, flash drive, or the disk itself. You don't want to install it on the hard drive again for fear of overwriting. You can also run recovery software from another Mac using Target Disk Mode.

Thanks so much for your advice. I guess I'll need to decide how badly I need these files back. And I wasn't aware of the potential overwriting issue. Now to order a new back up drive immediately! Once again, thanks!