Yosemite. Lost documents, pictures, music and films

Hi all,

I'm new. Desperately in need of some help. I visited Mac Forums regularly for help and/or advise but this is the first time i actually signed up and posted. Hope you guys are willing to help.

After installing Yosemite i wanted to change the boring icons in Finder. I followed the steps on a site to do that with Terminal. I managed to changed the icons and everything seemed fine. When i opened my "new" Finder, i noticed that the files in Documents, Pictures, Music and Films weren't visible. I panicked a little and tried to locate them via Hard drive - Users - Eric. Luckily all the files were still there. I then dragged the files from that location to the shortcuts on the left in the Finder (in the music file i only dragged the folder iTunes music). Again everything worked perfectly.

I used my Mac like i normally do for about an hour without any problem. Then i watched a movie (streamed to tv). After the movie i was at my mac again and from that moment on the shortcuts were empty. I couldn't find the files via Hard drive because i dragged them away from that location. The free disc space has not been changed so the files must be in there somewhere. At some point i managed to find them using the search bar in the finder. I couldn't access them. It said (something like) the Alias can not be opened because the location is unknown. The info said i had limited rights and it was not possible to change the rights, i couldn't "check the box".

For some reason i can't find the files using the search bar anymore. I searched hi and low but i can't find my files anywhere and i'm getting pretty desperate. My last back up is almost a year ago so my latest (important) documents and latest music is not backed up. I'm convinced the data is not lost, it's just somewhere i'm not able to find and more important access them.
I hope you guys are willing to help me find my files back. Any help is much appreciated.

Kind regards, Eric

Not keeping up with backups has diminished any chance of getting your files back, unless you want to restore from a year ago. We have no idea what you did in terminal, however, our advice to everyone is stay out of the terminal unless you're expert at using it.

Back up what you can and reinstall Yosemite is the best suggestion I can give you without knowing exactly what happened.

I'll second what chscag said about the diminished chances, but here is one thing to try. If you can get to the Applications folder, run Disk Utility and then Repair Permissions. If you cannot get to Applications, you can try to boot to the Recovery Partition (Hold down CMD and "R" during the boot) and run Disk utility from there to Repair Permissions. No guarantees, but that MIGHT take care of the access problems. Good luck with it. Backups are important.

Hey guys, thank you so much for your replies.

As you can imagine this is not what i wanted to hear lol.
Disk Utility is the first thing i tried but no luck. After running Disk Utility judging by the free disk space i know the data is still on the hard drive. It is NOT deleted, i just don't know where and how to access it. And Apple with their tricks and schemes isn't helping.

Your replies had got me thinking third party recovery software now. Is there anyone out there with some experience in this? Which software would you recommend? My computer knowledge is limited and it won't be the first time i've bought software that promises the world but turned out to be useless, that's why i'm asking.

Anyway, cheers the help is appreciated.

3rd party recovery software ..... to do what exactly ?
Recover something that is still there ( and may still be intact ) and by using that recovery software you risk damaging it.
If the data is still there, it can be made visible again.

Can you share a print screen of what exactly you see in Finder, including the left hand pane.

Have you tried SpotLight to locate your data ?

Cheers ... McBie

PS. I am starting to dislike this ' auto-correct ' feature thing as I type.

Hey McBie,

Thx for your reply. It's 1 pm where i'm at and i'm at work. Will post a print screen as soon as i get home.

Eric

I'm wondering here if in the "Drag" to the sidebar that somehow the files themselves got dragged into the Finder app folder? Wizards of the forum is that possible? Probable?

That is what I am thinking as well. The ' drag ' has moved the files into a subfolder somewhere.
SpotLight should find them.

Cheers ... McBie

The files are still there. I did something similar not to long ago. Here's what I did. From finder, click on "all my files". Sort by "Kind". Scroll down to a file name you are familiar with, then click on "get info". The info pane that opens up will give you the path to where your files are located. Once you know the path, go there in Finder and just drag it back where you want it.

This worked for me, and if I can find the missing files, ANYONE can LOL.

Hi again guys,

In an earlier post i mentioned my computer knowledge is limited, well ... i lied. I'm a super noob

It's been a challenge to post a print screen on here. It asked for a Url which threw me off. Anyway i did something with photo bucket so ... fingers crossed.

The names are in dutch. The first screen shot is of the Pictures folder. As you can see it's empty. I also added a screen shot of the Music folder. I dragged the folder iTunes Music out of the iTunes Media folder and as you can see it's missing.



@Hempomatic: Your reply kinda made me feel sad and bad. You said if you could do it ANYONE can ... guess what lol.

But i did discover something else thanks to you. Please guys, don't judge and don't laugh.
A few days ago i dragged some recovered files out of the bin to my Downloads folder. No idea why, but i didn't want to lose them (yet). I followed the instructions Hempomatic posted but it only showed the files i can already find without a problem. Spotlight or search has no results either.
I opened the folder recovered files and in there are 2 .tmp files. I have no idea what they are so i clicked on it. It opens in a text file with lots and lots of my missing music and movies. So happy i found something. Now my next challenge. How to get recovered files back.

I haven't recovered anything yet but i feel a lot better. I'm gonna search the forum to see if there is a post about recovered files. But feel free to post some advise.

I really hope this is the answer.

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Pictures folder. As you can see it's empty.

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Music folder: Music - iTunes - iTunes Media - (iTunes Music is missing)

Eric,
If you do a spotlight search for one of your files, what does spotlight come up with.
( Us looking at an empty folder is not going to help you find the files.
I am flemish so excuse me for being a bit direct -
Give spotlight a try and see what that comes up with.

Cheers ... McBie

Hey McBie,

I just ran Spotlight again, for example i tried to find iTunes/Music. It says it cannot find the file. Same with search in finder. I can't find any of the missing files.
And for the recovered files folder, i thought it was a warning for certain files being deleted and gave you a chance to recover/save them. It all looks like a bunch of gibberish and i'm getting pretty depressed. I'm out of ideas.
Going to walk the dog for a bit, clear my head.

Try doing what I suggested. Go to the "all my files" folder in Finder. Then click on the 2nd view from the left, the parallel lines. Go to the column "kind", and click on that. it will sort the files, then Just scroll to the files (file extensions, i.e. JPEG mp3, etc) you are missing. Highlight the file, go to info and it will show you EXACTLY where the files are.

I'm thinking the files are "hidden" by the drag and drop somewhere that is not being searched by Spotlight. About all I can think to do to find then is to use a better search tool. I use EasyFind (search for it) and it allows me to designate where to search and whether or not to search invisible files and folders. If you get that tool and search your entire drive for a word you KNOW is in the name of one of the files, if it finds it it will show the path to the file and you may find all the other files there as well.

Hey Hempomatic,

I did exactly what you suggested earlier and again just now. Like i said, it only shows the files i can already find without any problems. It doesn't show any of the missing files. But thanks anyway.

Hey MacInWin,

I was thinking something similar with my limited knowledge only i had no clue if something like that was even possible. I'm on it, gonna try right now.

EasyFind, as I said, can see invisible files. You might try that to search for them.

Sunday morning and i'm back at it. Had to take a little breather cause this thing is really getting to me.

Here's what i've discovered now:



Looks like there are 2 different Finders. I can only access one. Maybe i created a second Finder by messing with Terminal. Could it be that my missing files are located in the Finder i can't access? Or am i talking BS? Hopefully someone is familiar with this and can explain what's going on.

Sigh ... It won't be long before i grab my Mac and smash it against the wall.