Last night, I shut down my Mac and restarted it again. Today, when I went to open up the latest project I’m working on, Xojo could not locate the file. I did a search on my entire drive and the project is literally gone. Even the last build which was created last night is gone. In the Doc where the icon was, there’s nothing but a question mark. Has this ever happened to anyone else and if so, was there a solution? I’m not starting the project again from scratch. I’m just not doing it. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Right now, I’m gonna take some Xanax. Thanks.
Wow, that sucks (to say the least). Have you looked in the trash, just in case? Was it on an icloud directory?
Thanks for the condolences. It’s not in the trash and it wasn’t backed up to iCloud.
If you didnt use Find any File from TT to search the whole drive, download and try that .
Almost certainly the answer is no, but don’t you have Time Machine turned on?
Its an utter life saver in these scenarios.
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Of course all the previous versions are there, safe and sound.
Thanks, Jeff. I’ll give that a try. And, no, Time Machine was not on. Turning that on would have made too much sense I suppose.
I tried Find any File. Unfortunately, the closest thing to my project it found was a Project.md5 file that was created at 7:29 last night. The actual project file was saved and closed around 9:30 last night.
If anyone knows anyone who works for the FBI, please put me in contact with them if you wouldn’t mind. Do I say that in jest? That’s actually a good question.
Maybe saved to an external drive that is now disconnected?
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is there a quarantine folder on a Mac?
could you run a disk health/repair tool?
does your mac an os update after restart?
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Carsten, there was no external drive connected to my computer. Markus, I don’t know about any quarantine folder on a Mac other than what would be created by anti-virus software which I’m not running.
I contacted a data recovery outfit that’s going to see what they can do. I have to ship my device out to them and I should have it back within 48 hours along with the missing file if they’re successful.
Take a backup first.
I know first, second, and third hand of many people who sent machines in for repair, and find they just wipe the machine and re-install OSX
Dedicated data recovery places shouldn’t, (but they may struggle to cope with a soldered -in SSD drive if thats what you have…)
Can’t Time Machine supply it?
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Thanks, Jeff. I’ll definitely do that.
Tim, I would think it can.
Just a quick check are there any recovered items in your trash can? If so try putting them back, using the put back command.
Just a thought?
TC
Unfortunately there are no recovered files in the trash.
This isn’t just strange. It seems actually to defy explanation. If it were just the project file that vanished without a trace that would be strange enough. Yet even then, I can imagine there being some kind of explanation from a hardware or software standpoint that no one has thought of. But when you add to that the fact that even the build from last night has vanished into thin air, the whole thing begins to look intentional.
If the directory still exists, can you drag it into the terminal window, hit enter then do a ls -al and see if the files have somehow had a dot added to their name, I have seen this in the pass with SSD style drives when the in memory disk cache does not have enough time to flush itself before the system shuts down.
Clutching straws I know…
You MUST have multiple backups. Seriously:
- Local (Carbon Copy Cloner and the like)
- TimeMachine
- Online (BackBlaze or similar)
Never ever use a single project file. Make the files external instead.
And use SVN or Git.
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Like Trig, I was thinking at invisible files done by some virus. I already saw that some years ago.
The data were at the same location, so a simple Apple Script / navigation can be useful (if you recall where the folder was).
Emile, at your suggestion, I found an AppleScript on line that uses Python code to detect the hidden status of files and folders, or if they exist at all. The script says the files and folders associated with my project do not exist. Thanks for the suggestion.