HELP!!! - Grab Utility - Recover lost images?

Hey guys,

So I was taking a bunch of selections with the Grab Utility when my computer froze and I had to force shut down. I hadn't saved any of the selections yet, they were just still open in Grab, and when I started my computer back up, they were nowhere to be found. Is there any way to recover lost files like this? And what about the ones you accidentally say "don't save" to? I know none of these go to your trash. I can't find them there. The files save as "Untitled1", "Untitled2", etc.
I don't know a lot about how these things work, but if there's a recovery program that can do this, I'm willing to try it out.



Best,
squash

If you hadn't saved the files yet, they were most likely just sitting in memory until you decided to save them. That is, they were temporarily around, so if you do a shutdown then memory is wiped and with that those temporary images. You will have to re-Grab them again..

The thing is that they were screenshots from a video conversation with a bunch of friends. I can't retake them. Are you sure there isn't any way to retrieve them from the memory?
I know there's programs that will recover deleted files for you Mac, but I don't know if they're all just lying or if if the place deleted files go is the same as where those grab selections would go.

Deleted files are different from unsaved files. For example, open up TextEdit and start a new document. Type some stuff and then close the window. TextEdit will warn you that you have not saved the file, ignore it and close the application anyway, now reopen TextEdit and you have no content and you cannot get your data back..

The words you were writing were temporary so they cannot retrieved..

Nothing that is stored only in the memory (RAM) and not written to the hard drive is recoverable after a shutdown/restart of the system.

For your future reference, to take quick screenshots you can use the built in OS X shortcuts of CMD+space+3 to grab the entire screen or change to a 4 to grab a rectangle. In a hurry you can grab the entire screen and then crop later on.

With this process the screenshots will be saved to your desktop immediately.

Found my unsaved images in "Library/Autosave Information" folder

squashblossom11 said:

Hey guys,

So I was taking a bunch of selections with the Grab Utility when my computer froze and I had to force shut down. I hadn't saved any of the selections yet, they were just still open in Grab, and when I started my computer back up, they were nowhere to be found. Is there any way to recover lost files like this? And what about the ones you accidentally say "don't save" to? I know none of these go to your trash. I can't find them there. The files save as "Untitled1", "Untitled2", etc.
I don't know a lot about how these things work, but if there's a recovery program that can do this, I'm willing to try it out.



Best,
squash

Click to expand...

Hi,

I lost unsaved files from Grab previously and have found them in the Users/"my user"/library/Autosave Information folder with names such as "Unsaved Grab Document 2.tiff"
Obviously "my user" should be the username on your system

I won't tell you how to get to the library folder as I can't remember off the top of my head but there are loads of articles about it on the web (showing hidden files and folders on a mac).

I don't know when the autosave feature kicks in as I had my grab open for a couple of days so it might have been when I put my Mac to sleep but I found all my unsaved snapshots.

Hope it helps anyone else who loses them.

The above sounds like the user previously installed an "autosave" type utility and forgot about it. I don't believe Grab has that functionality on its own, but I could be mistaken, and it's worth a look.