Folders turned into Unix Executable Files?

Okay, so I got a new mac (a few months ago) because some water got into my old laptop and it crashed. I hadn't had it backed up so I wasn't able to save my files in time. However, a friend of mine knew some forensic computer examiners, and they were able to recover a majority of my folders/files no-problem. They put all of my old stuff that they were able to recover onto an external hard drive that I've owned for years, and they also put it onto a flash drive (for backup purposes). A lot of my documents got back onto my computer just fine, however, all of my folders (containing auto-recovery saves, stuff like that) were all turned into Unix Executable Files. There's plenty of stuff in them, but I don't know how to open it and get the files within the folder back

Is there any way I can turn the Unix Executables back into folders again, so I can re-open them and get some of those other documents? Maybe open them on a windows computer?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

If your hard drive has auto recovery saves that came from a Windows computer, you will not be able to open them in Mac. This is the same reason that you cannot open a .exe in Mac OS X.

You might be able to find a software that can restore those backups online, but I have not heard of any.

You could also use Boot Camp or VirtualBox to install Windows on your Mac and recover it that way.

If they truly are Unix executable files, chances are that they are completely deleted.

Can you post a screenshot of the folders here? A folder that has been made executable should still be openable so I wonder what the real issue is here.

It's also possible the files are recognized as executable but are unusable. Windows programs may have created files that are unusable on your new machine.

These are only two (of many), but they're probably the most important. They used to be regular old blue folders.



When I click on one of them terminal opens and this is what I get.



Also, I tried opening them on a windows computer, they still wouldn't open. There's something in them because when I go to Get Info, it tells me that they take up a few bytes (but they don't all take up the same amount of space).

Anything helps, even bad news.

Those are Windows folders not Unix Executable files even though they may say Unix Executable files. You can try to open them this way: Click on one of them and then press your space bar. If it opens that way, you may be able to extract the files they contain. If not, you might be out of luck and the data is lost.

I'm a little confused. Do I click once to highlight it, then press spacebar (only letting me see the files info), or do I double click (opening terminal) and then press space bar?

Files are labelled "Unix Executables" if OS X has no idea what they are. In essence, it's OS X's way of saying "I have no idea what this thing is."

Do the following:
1. Open up Terminal (/Applications/Utilities)
2. Type file, push space and them drag one of those unrecognized folders to the Terminal window. You should now see something that says "file /path/to/folder" (without the quotes of course).
3. Press enter. Some information will be printed to the Terminal window. Paste that information into a post here.

It says 'no such file or directory'.
That's bad, isn't it?

That's impossible - the file clearly exists since you took a screenshot of it. What did you enter in the Terminal window? It sounds like the path was malformed.

I did the wrong thing (hehe). I re-read your directions I forgot to hit space after file. Now it says 'data'.

try chmod 644 or 444 on the folders?

Tried that. Turns them into documents, still can't open them.

Do ls -ld and then the folder path after it. What does that return?

ls: illegal option -- /
usage: ls [-ABCFGHLOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuwx1] [file ...]

... what does this mean?

Use a singe - and not two --

I did.

You forgot again to put a space between the ls -ld and the file path.

Okay now (that I've finally got it right, sorry about that) it says -rwxr-xr-x 1 (my user name) staff 84 Sep 25 2009 and then the file path

If those files were recognized as directories, the first dash would be a "d". In other words, you'd see the following: drwxr-xr-x. Thus, those directories aren't actually seen as directories. To the best of my knowledge (I'll let someone chip in if there's a solution), you can't convert files to directories.

In terminal in the proper directory.
What comes back?