Snow Leopard 'data loss' bug not so bad after all?

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 09:42

Opinion and Analysis

The good news - apart from Apple's statement that it is working on a fix - is that according to some affected users, the missing data hasn't been deleted, merely moved.

Rather than "It's not dead, it's resting", let's say "It's not missing, it's mislaid."

So how do you find it? According to MacRumors forum member "augustm" the files are still in the /Users folder and can be readily recovered using Terminal. A corrected version of augustm's method can be found in Gary Robinson's blog.

Despite a long thread of generally uninformed comments (including an excess of apparent baiting) in that MacRumors forum, I couldn't find anyone saying "I tried that and it didn't work" - or for that matter, "I tried that and it worked".

Though one participant did link to a post by AppleInsider forum member "asdasd" who pointed out that the symptoms are more consistent with triggering the creation of a new home folder for the normal account rather than actually deleting any data.

That seems to suggest that a) the bug really is rare, and b) augustm's method is probably worth a try if you do run into the issue.

To borrow from another classic British comedy show, "Don't panic!"