Snow Leopard Bug Responsible for Loss of User Data Gaining Notice

[fpbecker]

Major bug in Snow Leopard deletes all user data

Reports have been cropping (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10198726) up (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2142272&start=0&tstart=0) on the Apple Support forums that users have been losing all their data due to a nasty bug in Snow Leopard, Apple's latest Operating System. Many users are reporting that all settings are being reset and most data is gone, according to iTWire (http://www.itwire.com/content/view/28388/53/).

The problem, can easily be reproduced when a user logs into the 'guest' account, either on purpose or by accident, and when they log back out of the account and back into their normal one, they find that their account has been fully reset with all data wiped and lost - the account is like a brand new one. The home directory still exists under "/Users/username" but is completely empty.

Users are reporting that the data is unrecoverable and cannot be found anywhere on the hard drive, and the only way to restore it is if the user has been performing backups on a separate hard-drive. Apparently the problem has been present since a few days after launch, as the forum post dates back to 12th September, but as of yet, Apple has been silent.

It seems the only work around (http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10346974-263.html) at this stage is to disable the Guest account, or at least disable it and then re-enabling it so that it's a native Snow Leopard account. Another suggestion is to create a new account and enforce parental controls, if you really need a temporary account.

It's not clear how many users are affected, but it seems like any user who had Leopard before the upgrade, and had the guest account enabled are affected and are at risk.

News source: Neowin.net (http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/10/11/major-bug-in-snow-leopard-deletes-all-user-data)

How did that bug slip past Apple's QA, and why hasn't it been fixed yet?

[Scarlet Fever]

tested on my own machine (10.6.1). Files are still in tact.

[edesignuk]

*********. That's not good :eek:

There's no reason for anyone to go any where near a guest account on my system, but I'm gonna make sure it's disabled anyway.

Can you imagine the outcry if Windows was doing this?

[chrono1081]

I'm sorry I'm going to have to call BS on this one, or else extremely isolated. Not only can I not reproduce the problem on either snow leopard machine I have in front of me but I'm sure we would have seen something on engadget or macrumors much earlier.

[teekayess]

Machine: 17" MacBook Pro - first model introduced with Intel
• I installed Snow Leopard and my hard drive icon disappeared off the desktop.
• Then I noticed degradation of performance of routine tasks (click and drag, opening files)
• next programs started to lock up; machine turned to molasses
• text entry for anything (email, Word, etc.) limited to 6-8 characters then lockup for 15-30 seconds, sometimes longer
• searched for applications folder and it was missing
• went into time machine: apps folder missing
• went back as far as I could (11 months) and found only original apps file, but could not restore them by any means, starting with simple Time Machine restoration
• AFter three failed attempts at Time Machine restoration, I blanked the drive and reinstalled Leopard 10.5.8 and restored some of my programs, but now my iPhoto has gone missing.
• reinstalled twice, same result
• basic functions of other programs and operating system okay, but with iPhoto disappearing, I'm more than a little uneasy.

Question: what now?
:confused:
teekayess

[Mal]

Machine: 17" MacBook Pro - first model introduced with Intel
• I installed Snow Leopard and my hard drive icon disappeared off the desktop.

Just a feature. If you'd have taken a look around, you'd have noticed you simply have to turn that back on from the Finder's preferences.

• Then I noticed degradation of performance of routine tasks (click and drag, opening files)
• next programs started to lock up; machine turned to molasses
• text entry for anything (email, Word, etc.) limited to 6-8 characters then lockup for 15-30 seconds, sometimes longer
• searched for applications folder and it was missing
• went into time machine: apps folder missing
• went back as far as I could (11 months) and found only original apps file, but could not restore them by any means, starting with simple Time Machine restoration
• AFter three failed attempts at Time Machine restoration, I blanked the drive and reinstalled Leopard 10.5.8 and restored some of my programs, but now my iPhoto has gone missing.
• reinstalled twice, same result
• basic functions of other programs and operating system okay, but with iPhoto disappearing, I'm more than a little uneasy.

Question: what now?
:confused:
teekayess

The rest of that sounds like a failing hard drive, though it doesn't explain the backups not being there (assuming they really weren't there and that you weren't just not finding them). It would make sense with the failed restore from backups as well.

jW

[teekayess]

Thanks for the tip on the "feature" . . . but if the apps were there, then clicking the icon for something, say a Word file, would still produce the program, yes? Five days ago the apps file was visible, as was my hard drive icon (though not after second Snow Leopard installation).

But the degradation got to the point where nothing would even mount.

All I got was a string of question marks in my dock, no apps file, and nothing would work. When I would click on a Word document or photoshop document, I would get a message saying: No application designated for this action (or something along those lines), so I would search, and no applications were available. After Time Machine restore at three different dates (one ten days ago, one three months ago, and one from the beginning eleven months ago--in that order) no apps, nothing would work.

DAta files, however, seem to be intact (unlike those of several friends who have lost everything). Except of course for iPhoto files which have disappeared.

Any other suggestions?

As you can see I"m a user, not a tech person, and I am sitting in Bangladesh, several thousand miles from able technicians in Singapore (in spite of the "authorized Apple reseller" here in Dhaka).

cheers,
teekayess
17" MacBook Pro, 2.16 GHz, 2 GB 6p67 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, etc.

[calderone]

One of the articles I read alluded to the problem being related to an upgrade and not a clean install.

Such that the guest account was not a "native Snow Leopard account."

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/10/11/major-bug-in-snow-leopard-deletes-all-user-data

[belvdr]

As always, users should be backing up their data. If it's not important enough to backup, it's okay for it to be deleted.

[Hellhammer]

Thanks, this is great to know. Just disabled guest account though it has never been used and I did a clean install and have two backups but it would be another few hours if my data will get deleted

[Mal]

Thanks for the tip on the "feature" . . . but if the apps were there, then clicking the icon for something, say a Word file, would still produce the program, yes? Five days ago the apps file was visible, as was my hard drive icon (though not after second Snow Leopard installation).

But the degradation got to the point where nothing would even mount.

All I got was a string of question marks in my dock, no apps file, and nothing would work. When I would click on a Word document or photoshop document, I would get a message saying: No application designated for this action (or something along those lines), so I would search, and no applications were available. After Time Machine restore at three different dates (one ten days ago, one three months ago, and one from the beginning eleven months ago--in that order) no apps, nothing would work.

DAta files, however, seem to be intact (unlike those of several friends who have lost everything). Except of course for iPhoto files which have disappeared.

Any other suggestions?

As you can see I"m a user, not a tech person, and I am sitting in Bangladesh, several thousand miles from able technicians in Singapore (in spite of the "authorized Apple reseller" here in Dhaka).

cheers,
teekayess
17" MacBook Pro, 2.16 GHz, 2 GB 6p67 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, etc.

Did you read my post? Your hard drive is failing (most likely). You'll need to get it repaired. If you can't fix it yourself (sounds like you're not interested in that), then you'll have to find someone who you can take it to. If you're in warranty, Apple will replace that drive. If you didn't have a backup, though, then figure on your data being lost (though sounds like you've got everything but pictures). If you haven't yet, back up everything you can, and then get that to someone who can fix it for you.

jW

EDIT: and just in case you can't figure out what I'm saying, your problem has absolutely nothing to do with Snow Leopard. This is a hardware problem.

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/10/12/snow-leopard-bug-responsible-for-loss-of-user-data-gaining-notice/)

Late last week, 9 to 5 Mac noted (http://www.9to5mac.com/snow_leopards_eat_users) that a number of users have reported a Mac OS X Snow Leopard bug apparently related to Guest accounts that is resulting in a complete loss of user data. The problem appears to manifest itself on machines which had the Guest account option enabled under Leopard and were subsequently upgraded to Snow Leopard. Users booting their machines have reported that upon start-up, they have been logged into the Guest account. Upon switching to their regular account, the affected users have been finding all of their user data missing and unrecoverable except from a backup.

Further investigation revealed initial reports (http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10346974-263.htmll) of the problem in early September, soon after Snow Leopard's launch.This could be due to a bug in how guest accounts are managed since data and settings are deleted from these accounts upon logout, but also could be from some corruption in the guest account. So far, it does not seem to be a widespread problem.

If this happens to you, immediately restore using your latest Time Machine backup (or other full system backup), and then go to the Accounts system preferences and disable log-in on the guest account.One suggestion (http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10356505-263.html) for preventing data deletion is for users who had Guest accounts enabled under Leopard and then upgraded to Snow Leopard to disable the Guest account and then reenable it. This results in fresh Guest account settings created under Snow Leopard, reportedly eliminating the problem.

Several (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2142272) threads (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2157518) on the issue have popped up on Apple's support forums, but Apple has yet to make an official acknowledgement of the problem.

Article Link: Snow Leopard Bug Responsible for Loss of User Data Gaining Notice (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/10/12/snow-leopard-bug-responsible-for-loss-of-user-data-gaining-notice/)

[macintologist]

I had a guest account in Leopard, I upgraded to Snow Leopard and now I just realized I can't access the Account settings in System Preferences! I wonder if this is related to this story.

[SimonTheSoundMa]

Or you could just be a Sidekick user and enjoy Microsoft/Danger loosing all your data.

Just think if Apple lost data to do with .Mac/MobileMe.

[kupua]

This is not the only data loss, SL is also causing data loss by means of USB and FireWire External drives. What I don't understand is why this is taking apple so long to address this issue. ITS a BIG DEAL

[Macminiintel]

I just installed Snow Leopard on 28 iMacs at my college, they run on the Guest & student accounts, no one has reported data loss to the head of the media department, I just help out, because I know a fair bit about Macs and the main I.T techs at my college don't really. I'll ask tomorrow though

I haven't had any issues either with any of my Macs at home. My MacBook running snow leopard is backing up fine to my RAID, as are my 3 Mac minis to there external hard drives

[madrag]

that's something I didn't expect with the OS so far away from the start line :(

I'm glad I don't use guest accounts and that I haven't upgraded to SL.

Backup seems to be the word of the day.

[iRez]

stupid crap, this happened to me and to top it off my time machine backup is all of a sudden not recognizable with ANY machine i plug it in. I thought snow leopard was to alleviate issues, not ruin my life with them. Good thing I saved my home folder on another drive and managed to save my music and photos and vids but there go all my fonts, my design work from the last month and a half, and all else that i wish i had but don't anymore. CCC never gave me the issues i've had time and time and time again with time machine (on three different external drives). APPLE YOU HAVE TONS OF MONEY SAVED, PLEASE INVEST MORE INTO YOUR OPERATING SYSTEMS AND COMPUTERS. YES, WE ALL LOVE OUR IPODS AND IPHONES AND APPLE TVS AND WHAT NOT BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR COMPUTERS!?!?!?!

[Gasu E.]

It must be happening fairly infrequently. Nevertheless, any kind of data loss is very, very serious.

[ghostface147]

No problems here whatsoever. Time Machine works great, no data issues.

[Oshawapilot]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.

[Vulpinemac]

This is not the only data loss, SL is also causing data loss by means of USB and FireWire External drives. What I don't understand is why this is taking apple so long to address this issue. ITS a BIG DEAL

Care to detail your allegations? I personally use a USB drive as an emergency boot drive and I haven't seen any issues like you describe. I also have two different Firewire drives attached (500GB FW400 and 1TB FW800) with no data losses. If any place, the corruption I'm finding is in the SATA internal drive.

[shanmugam]

sad apple

[ChocoboLee]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.

Yeah, but if you couple the Snow Leopard guest account data loss with a 18 month old dead Time Machine, you've got yourself a very pissed off customer.

[Morky]

Always perform a clean install.

[Macmel]

Where are the Apple fanbois? I'm curious to know what they are going to say this time... Vista might have been a mess, but nobody lost their data...
Let's see... Maybe they tell us taht is good because Apple let us free some space in our HD... Or, wait, encourage us to get new friends or listen to new music by deleting all our previous pictures and music... Or just wants you to find a new way of doing your work, by deleting all that you have previously done...
Apple: always working for you!.

[3D0G]

If this turns out to be true, this is a major hole in Apple's OS X story. I mean--losing all your data!?!? MS could have a field day turning the tables on Apple's "it just works" line (note that I'm NOT saying that MS "just works" either though).

I've been dismissing a lot of the SL bug complaints as rare cases to be expected in any release, but this one is making me seriously pause to think what other problems can be lurking under the covers. Believe me, I don't like saying this--I've been a big Apple fan since the Apple II.

I'll bet Steve is furious. Maybe someone needs to be fired for this one.

[haravikk]

Hmm, seems it was a good thing then that I did a fresh-install of Snow Leopard, as I used to have the guest account enabled under Leopard.

[Macmel]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.

Justifying Apple already... Nice. How about the time to put back your files? how about you are on the road and you don't have your HD with you? How about you are working and lose inmediately all your info (and some customers)?

[whooleytoo]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.

Assuming, of course, there are no major bugs in Time Machine too..

[augustm]

I had this problem however:

The files were still in /Users,
recovery was not too difficult.

1) su in terminal
2) mv username username.old
3) create account username
4) mv username username.new
5) mv usermane.old username
6) chown -R username username

But I did panic before seeing the solution

[Nym]

Or you could just be a Sidekick user and enjoy Microsoft/Danger loosing all your data.

Just think if Apple lost data to do with .Mac/MobileMe.

It depends on the perspective.

I figure that Microsoft product users would say that losing your user folder data on your OS is definitely worse than losing the data in your MobileMe account.

Stop being apologetic, it's a bug, hey, it happens.

But let's not act like MacRumors wouldn't be flooding with Windows bashing if the same thing happened to PC's running Windows 7.

Anyway, this didn't happen to me. Let's just hope Apple sorts this one out quickly because, let's face it, it's a major screw up.

[Macmel]

Always perform a clean install.

Of course, if you install an OS FOLLOWING MANUFACTURERS INSTRUCTIONS which did not include a CLEAN INSTALL option (but pretty much you had to do it yourself with disc utility) AND this install corrupts your computer and you lose all your data, IT'S YOUR FAULT.
Amazing. Just amazing.

[MH01]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.

Heck, you better have a backup on a DVD as well, what if the 1TB dies.... make that 3 dvd is different locations just to make sure. I can accept dataloss due to hardware failure or user stupidity, but and OS upgrade is piss weak.

[Hellium]

Or you could just be a Sidekick user and enjoy Microsoft/Danger loosing all your data.

Just think if Apple lost data to do with .Mac/MobileMe.

And how is that related to this news story?

[Oshawapilot]

Assuming, of course, there are no major bugs in Time Machine too..

Grasping at straws now? Yeah, the potential for the *latest* backups to be empty (assuming a backup completes after the data loss) is there, but unless you are using a tiny backup drive with only marginal room for a day or three of backups (instead of the weeks/months that is easy with Time Machine and a large backup drive) then there's nothing to worry about.

[Hellhammer]

Bad Apple, bad! Hope they fix it soon because this is a serious issue and their image will be damaged if they don't

[bmish]

Find an account with no password (using the guest account results in data loss).

Now go to the login screen and click the account with no password, then quickly click on the account that HAS a password. Do this fast enough and you can login to your account without typing your password.

This leaves your keychain locked. But all your data is accessible in this way. If you logged in using the guest account, then upon logging out of your account, you may lose data in your home folder including your Documents.

Can't say why this showed up in Snow Leopard and 10.6.1. If this turns out to be as widespread as I have tested, then disable accounts without passwords until Apple can put out a patch. I have reported it to Apple because it works on several systems I have tested (including clean installations).

[SteveLV702]

I don't know if this is related but I came home yesterday from the Movies turned on my MacBook Pro and got a black screen that on the top said "No Bootable Drive Found, insert disc to continue"

I was able to restart and hold the Options key down and then select the hard drive and get back into SL but now several of my apps freeze and crash every 30-90 seconds after opening them.....

[Oshawapilot]

Heck, you better have a backup on a DVD as well, what if the 1TB dies..

Call me anal-retentive, but I keep offsite backups of my absolutely essential files, mainly my digital pictures and anything not stored on the cloud, which nowadays, is increasingly little. :)

[VenusianSky]

And as usual, somebody attempts to spin an article about Mac OS X into a Windows vs Mac backstreet matchup. :rolleyes:

[MH01]

If this turns out to be true, this is a major hole in Apple's OS X story. I mean--losing all your data!?!? MS could have a field day turning the tables on Apple's "it just works" line (note that I'm NOT saying that MS "just works" either though).

I've been dismissing a lot of the SL bug complaints as rare cases to be expected in any release, but this one is making me seriously pause to think what other problems can be lurking under the covers. Believe me, I don't like saying this--I've been a big Apple fan since the Apple II.

I'll bet Steve is furious. Maybe someone needs to be fired for this one.

If this dataloss was due to a virus, M$ would have a field day.....

[Kahnyl]

I had a guest account in Leopard, I upgraded to Snow Leopard and now I just realized I can't access the Account settings in System Preferences! I wonder if this is related to this story.

That happened to me last year when I upgraded to Leopard. I found a fix with Google that involved booting into some command line mode and changing the root password.

[Richard1028]

The problem, can easily be reproduced when a user logs into the 'guest' account, either on purpose or by accident, and when they log back out of the account and back into their normal one, they find that their account has been fully reset with all data wiped and lostI "upgraded" SL right on top of Leopard. One of my kids has been firing up the guest account regularly since Sep 1.

I guess my data is stubborn 'cause it's still there.

[flopticalcube]

Its not a bug, its a feature! Glad I waited until 10.6.2, maybe I'll wait for 10.6.3...

[thejadedmonkey]

I had this problem however:

The files were still in /Users,
recovery was not too difficult.

1) su in terminal
2) mv username username.old
3) create account username
4) mv username username.new
5) mv usermane.old username
6) chown -R username username

But I did panic before seeing the solution

That doesn't even make sense. That implies that all of your files as in your old user account, and you just renamed it, and then un-renamed it. The issue is that the files are DELETED, so they won't be in your user account.

[MH01]

Call me anal-retentive, but I keep offsite backups of my absolutely essential files, mainly my digital pictures and anything not stored on the cloud, which nowadays, is increasingly little. :)

Nope that is smart. But your average user, will not be using time machine, so this sucks big time for them. And the technically handicapped will not even know what time machine is, and for them to loose their data, sucks big time.

[Oshawapilot]

That happened to me last year when I upgraded to Leopard. I found a fix with Google that involved booting into some command line mode and changing the root password.

Same here, I lost admin access on my only admin account on one of my machines. This was before I upgraded to SL so I don't think it's related to this issue persay, but I too had to enable the root account to resolve the issue.

[Bubba Satori]

Or you could just be a Sidekick user and enjoy Microsoft/Danger loosing all your data.

Just think if Apple lost data to do with .Mac/MobileMe.

Thank goodness for MS. Knowing that they have the same problems is such a comfort when the **** hits the fan. and of course it's worse cause their's stinks. :rolleyes:

[dernhelm]

Always perform a clean install.

Good advice, when you can. But clean installs are notoriously time consuming to restore everything, especially if you have multiple user accounts.

Besides, this doesn't let Apple off the hook. This issue is serious, especially if it is as reproducible as this article makes it sound. My guess is that it's a little more complex than simply have a guest account and upgrade from Leopard to SL. But even still, total loss of data is just plain ridiculous.

[Richard1028]

I'm sorry I'm going to have to call BS on this one, or else extremely isolated. Not only can I not reproduce the problem on either snow leopard machine I have in front of me but I'm sure we would have seen something on engadget or macrumors much earlier.Well, it's here now. :D

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=801736

[Oshawapilot]

Nope that is smart. But your average user, will not be using time machine

See my earlier comment about lack of pity for those who don't backup. ;)

Data loss happens, either through virus' or situations like this. Just last night at Thanksgiving dinner I listened to a family member reminisce about 2 years of lost digital photos that were cooked when their XP machine was trashed by a virus. I reitterated the absolute necesity of backups to her and she's picking up an external drive this week.

Based on my observations Apple has at least made backups stupid easy and have advertised Time Machine enough that the average OS X user should know about it, and sheesh, it can't possibly be any easier to use.

Therefore, I come full circle about having little pity for those without backups. Even if money is tight you can get a used 500gig external USB drive for $30 or $40 and it'll do the job.

[augustm]

That doesn't even make sense. That implies that all of your files as in your old user account, and you just renamed it, and then un-renamed it. The issue is that the files are DELETED, so they won't be in your user account.


My files were not deleted... However the accounts and files had become
"disassociated". I am an old time Unix user so I actually live 90% of the time
in the terminal. My solution was to re-set the accounts and re-associate the
data to the approriate accounts.

[calderone]

Find an account with no password (using the guest account results in data loss).

Now go to the login screen and click the account with no password, then quickly click on the account that HAS a password. Do this fast enough and you can login to your account without typing your password.

This leaves your keychain locked. But all your data is accessible in this way. If you logged in using the guest account, then upon logging out of your account, you may lose data in your home folder including your Documents.

Can't say why this showed up in Snow Leopard and 10.6.1. If this turns out to be as widespread as I have tested, then disable accounts without passwords until Apple can put out a patch.

Anyone displaying their usernames in the login window didn't care about security in the first IMO. Accounts without passwords? Yeah, that is security.

[twoodcc]

well, if you are using a system with the guest account enabled, either you need to have a backup of your data, or don't have valuable data on that machine

[Eric S.]

that's something I didn't expect with the OS so far away from the start line :(

I'm glad I don't use guest accounts and that I haven't upgraded to SL.

Backup seems to be the word of the day.

Well I've said it before, the reality is that if anyone installs a version prior to .2 of these releases then that's just signing up to be an Apple beta tester. And obviously it's necessary to prepare accordingly.

[natallica]

This is not the only data loss, SL is also causing data loss by means of USB and FireWire External drives. What I don't understand is why this is taking apple so long to address this issue. ITS a BIG DEAL

Explain please! I just Googled and found nothing specific except for this post.

Thanks!

-- N

[javaJake]

I never use the upgrade option. On any OS. I don't trust them (for these reasons, and others) to upgrade properly. It all simplifies down to this: there's never a 1:1 correlation between versions, requiring guesswork and intelligence on the part of the installer.

Rather, I keep a backup from which I can recover my computer within an hour. This means I can "upgrade" by doing a clean install, and then simply start fresh with my backups.

I think whoever uses the "Upgrade" option probably (though not always) doesn't have a good backup system in place.

[Westside guy]

This is a big deal and obviously a significant problem. It doesn't matter it requires a particular set of circumstances to trigger it - we're talking about a reasonably standard Mac setup (not one I use, fortunately).

Equally big is the need for regular backups. I don't understand people that don't do this - I've been a programmer for 20-odd years and remember the days when hard drive crashes were not unusual events. But even without hard drive crashes, data corruption and accidental erasure do still happen - and, as we see once again, software is not perfect.

[clevin]

anoter reason not to do upgrade.

[NasserAE]

Why we are hearing about this now?! This would have been news more than a month ago when SL was released.

[thejadedmonkey]

My files were not deleted... However the accounts and files had become
"disassociated". I am an old time Unix user so I actually live 90% of the time
in the terminal. My solution was to re-set the accounts and re-associate the
data to the approriate accounts.

Sorry for the biting response, I thought you were talking about the deleting issue... If SL is doing this, too, that's not good either!

[flopticalcube]

anoter reason not to do upgrade.
I agree. The list seems to be getting longer.

[*LTD*]

Using the Guest account is extremely rare. You probably wouldn't find anyone doing beta testing on such an account. Whatever was changed in the code for that function was probably believed insignificant, so it wasn't thoroughly tested.

The article mentions a thread that contains 45 posts, most of which aren't from people with this problem, who claim an occasional issue with something that only occurs in a particular method, sometimes but not always. This bug in Snow Leopard is apparently not easy to reproduce, and will not even work on a clean install. So if you were planning on buying a new Mac, this wouldn't even affect you.

It helps to maintain the proper perspective on the issue.

[Pixellated]

This happened to me :(. I lost all data except apps, otherwise, it was like I had done a clean install of SL.

[mdriftmeyer]

That doesn't even make sense. That implies that all of your files as in your old user account, and you just renamed it, and then un-renamed it. The issue is that the files are DELETED, so they won't be in your user account.

If one does a du -h on their account to determine whether their inode tree structure shows their root node has been redirected will determine whether the "loss" actually exists or whether it's hidden from the primary account holder due to that pointer mapping losing access, and or it's been renamed without an update visible to the original account holder.

Example: $ du -h

If the size of files hasn't changed and you cannot view the content then the pointer to that content structure has been renamed and gives the appearance that all content has been removed.

[KingYaba]

Glad I erased and installed.

[SimonJ]

Why is everyone and their mother voting this negative? The fact that it's gaining notice should mean a greater likelihood of it being fixed (faster)!

[iPoodOverZune]

Man, you would think, this version was supposed to be tweak and bug fix one, and they would cover all their bases in the two years of development. But it really looks to me that Apple really wanted to make a very thorough and concerted effort to build iPhone platform (nothing wrong with that), leaving no stone unturned, and used much of OS X team resources to accomplish that. Hence, there were limited resources available and limited development on the OS X front, which they covered up by calling it a bug fix and fine tuning update, and selling it for less.

In reality, my feeling is that this was not at all supposed to be a "stop new features and fine tune" but came to be that way as a result of iPhone's gestational nutritional needs. :rolleyes:

[digitalbiker]

Grasping at straws now? Yeah, the potential for the *latest* backups to be empty (assuming a backup completes after the data loss) is there, but unless you are using a tiny backup drive with only marginal room for a day or three of backups (instead of the weeks/months that is easy with Time Machine and a large backup drive) then there's nothing to worry about.

Actually I wouldn't feel safe with just Time Machine either. I have had problems with Time Machine file corruption and I have done full restores from Time Machine and they have been plagued with problems.

Your best bet is a full backup strategy. Time Machine, Drobo, Cloud, and offsite.

[Goona]

Man, you would think, this version was supposed to be tweak and bug fix one, and they would cover all their bases in the two years of development. But it really looks to me that Apple really wanted to make a very thorough and concerted effort to build iPhone platform (nothing wrong with that), leaving no stone unturned, and used much of OS X team resources to accomplish that. Hence, there were limited resources available and limited development on the OS X front, which they covered up by calling it a bug fix and fine tuning update, and selling it for less.

In reality, my feeling is that this was not at all supposed to be a "stop new features and fine tune" but came to be that way as a result of iPhone's gestational nutritional needs. :rolleyes:Right, blame everything on the iphone. :rolleyes:

[Eminemdrdre00]

Glad I erased and installed.

Would you mind trying to recreate the issue to confirm that a clean install does not cause this bug? If not, your comment was useless.

[Oshawapilot]

Actually I wouldn't feel safe with just Time Machine either. I have had problems with Time Machine file corruption

I'll admit I've experienced issues with it in the past as well but when I did need it in a large scale once (fresh install on our Macbook) it worked perfectly, and on smaller scales (accidentally deleted files, etc) it's worked as well.

I've found it more stable/reliable since the final updates of Leopard, and rock solid since SL. I did have to start over once when something happened that was irrecoverable (within the first few months of having TM when bugs were plenty), but a new backup built automatically within hours restoring me to a safe status. Since then I've had no issues and my offsite backups add another level of comfort for me.

[Westside guy]

Would you mind trying to recreate the issue to confirm that a clean install does not cause this bug? If not, your comment was useless.

And yours wasn't? :D

[ChromeAce]

This problem pales in comparison to the FireWire I/O issue that is plaguing many users with external hard drives, corrupting data and preventing copying of large amounts of files.

Apple has yet to acknowledge it nor has MacRumors drawn attention to it on its news page event after 6 pages of user complaints.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136580

[VenusianSky]

Why is everyone and their mother voting this negative? The fact that it's gaining notice should mean a greater likelihood of it being fixed (faster)!

Maybe because it has a negative impact to your data?

To be honest, I don't even know what the rating represents. Is it based on how well-written and accurate the information is, like a rating on the author? Or, is it based on importance and how relative the content is to the reader? Or, is it a rating on the subject of the content (example: How every Microsoft-based article scores mostly negatives regardless of the content)?
Or, is a combination of all of these?

[Eminemdrdre00]

So this is what Apple meant when they told me I would get about 6-10GB of hard drive space back?

[mach1andy]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=791110

I flipped open my macbook (running 10.6.1) yesterday, went to sign in as a guest and i got the spinning pinwheel. It eventually went back to the login screen for both my username and the guest account. When I entered my username's password it took me to a "guest" looking account and all of my data was gone. The user->desktop folder showed 0Kb, iTunes, Safari, iPhoto are completely empty -- yet when i navigate to the folders under 'macintosh', I see all of the files (minus my entire desktop).

Has this happened to anyone? Any suggestions? I tried giving her the old "APPLE + OPT + P + R" and took out the battery for a bit but to no avail. Completely puzzled & on vacation. Gnarly feeling.

[flopticalcube]

Maybe because it has a negative impact to your data?

To be honest, I don't even know what the rating represents. Is it based on how well-written and accurate the information is, like a rating on the author? Or, is it based on importance and how relative the content is to the reader? Or, is it a rating on the subject of the content (example: How every Microsoft-based article scores mostly negatives regardless of the content)?
Or, is a combination of all of these?
The ratings mean absolutely nothing:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Help:MacRumors_FAQ#What_do_the_positive_and_negative_ratings_on_the_front_page_mean.3F

What do the positive and negative ratings on the front page mean?

They mean different things to different people. A positive rating can be a vote of confidence that a rumor is true, a belief that a product announcement is a positive development, happiness with the performance of a software update, and so on. A negative vote could have just as many different meanings. Even the most positive news can get some negative votes; that's fine, everyone has an opinion.
Note that the vote counts you see are not updated instantly when you vote. The display is cached for performance reasons, since we have a large volume of site traffic. Your vote was counted and the number will be updated within minutes.

[MacFly123]

No problems here whatsoever. Time Machine works great, no data issues.

Ya well, I have Snow Leopard and a Time Capsule as well, but this coupled with reports of failing Time Capsules = REALLY REALLY BAD!!! :(

I have been worried about my Time Capsule as it is getting about a year old which is when they are starting to fail. I have all my DVDs ripped on it and if I lost those I would literally lose hundreds of hours of work!!! GET ON THE BALL APPLE!

Anyone know if 10.6.2 is addressing this?

[3D0G]

Maybe because it has a negative impact to your data?

To be honest, I don't even know what the rating represents. Is it based on how well-written and accurate the information is, like a rating on the author? Or, is it based on importance and how relative the content is to the reader? Or, is it a rating on the subject of the content (example: How every Microsoft-based article scores mostly negatives regardless of the content)?
Or, is a combination of all of these?

I was similarly puzzled about what these ratings mean, but a while ago I came across the following on the MacRumors FAQ page:

"They mean different things to different people. A positive rating can be a vote of confidence that a rumor is true, a belief that a product announcement is a positive development, happiness with the performance of a software update, and so on. A negative vote could have just as many different meanings. Even the most positive news can get some negative votes; that's fine, everyone has an opinion."

So, I've pretty much stopped looking at the ratings, since, with an overly broad definition, they seem pretty meaningless.

[BongoBanger]

This is an awkward one for Apple - it has a low likelihood, high severity kind of impact which isn't good.

Best get it fixed as soon as possible.

[zacman]

Apple even advertised that you get 6-10GB HDD space back with Slow Leopard, didn't they? So it's not a bug but a feature obviously. :D

[calderone]

Would you mind trying to recreate the issue to confirm that a clean install does not cause this bug? If not, your comment was useless.

I know reading is tough...

"One suggestion for preventing data deletion is for users who had Guest accounts enabled under Leopard and then upgraded to Snow Leopard to disable the Guest account and then reenable it. This results in fresh Guest account settings created under Snow Leopard, reportedly eliminating the problem."

If this fixes the problem, the fix suggests that this is only a problem for those who brought a guest account from Leopard. WHich means it would not exist in a clean install.

Of course we don't have all the information yet, but it seems from this that a clean install would not have this problem.

Try reading before saying someone's comment is "useless."

[Amdahl]

This is not the only data loss, SL is also causing data loss by means of USB and FireWire External drives. What I don't understand is why this is taking apple so long to address this issue. ITS a BIG DEAL

Don't worry, they'll fix it before SL comes out of beta.

I've been dismissing a lot of the SL bug complaints as rare cases to be expected in any release, but this one is making me seriously pause to think what other problems can be lurking under the covers. Believe me, I don't like saying this--I've been a big Apple fan since the Apple II.

Steve has no one to blame but himself. SL was clearly not ready to ship, and they just rushed it out the door because they needed to beat Windows 7's hype machine.

Of course, if you install an OS FOLLOWING MANUFACTURERS INSTRUCTIONS which did not include a CLEAN INSTALL option (but pretty much you had to do it yourself with disc utility) AND this install corrupts your computer and you lose all your data, IT'S YOUR FAULT.
Amazing. Just amazing.
When an Apple product fails to impress, it is always due to operator error.

[nullx86]

I havent had any data loss yet, but I am going back to Leopard tonight, too many bugs with SL for it to be safe... Maybe when 10.6.3 comes out, ill come back...

[knightlie]

Grasping at straws now? Yeah, the potential for the *latest* backups to be empty (assuming a backup completes after the data loss) is there, but unless you are using a tiny backup drive with only marginal room for a day or three of backups (instead of the weeks/months that is easy with Time Machine and a large backup drive) then there's nothing to worry about.

I don't think he's grasping at straws at all. I've just gone into Time Machine to find that it's not backing up the VMWare Fusion virtual machine I'm working on. So while I'm backing up my project separately, I would have to recreate the VM from scratch in case of a failure. Time Machine is, in this specific case, useless, regardless of my relying on it in ignorant bliss.

Either way, this fault is pretty unforgivable, if it's true. I'm just glad I don't use the Guest account for anything.

[commander.data]

anoter reason not to do upgrade.
I thought Apple is actually pointing users away from clean installs, by hiding the clean install option and defaulting to upgrade in Snow Leopard. In which case, Apple is basically bringing this on themselves. If they are encouraging people to do an upgrade install, they should at least thoroughly test the common cases, which having a Guest account seems reasonable.

It's true that users should have a backup and Time Machine makes things easy, but that doesn't excuse Apple from having a major OS data loss flaw. Unless Apple starts advertising Time Machine as a method to avoid data loss caused first-party functionality of the OS.

[knightlie]

Where are the Apple fanbois? I'm curious to know what they are going to say this time... Vista might have been a mess, but nobody lost their data...
Let's see... Maybe they tell us taht is good because Apple let us free some space in our HD... Or, wait, encourage us to get new friends or listen to new music by deleting all our previous pictures and music... Or just wants you to find a new way of doing your work, by deleting all that you have previously done...
Apple: always working for you!.

Actually, as someone who has lost all data from a Windows failure, I can safely ask you to take your boring trolling elsewhere.

[gerrynjr]

Just had this happen to me last week on my macbook pro... wasnt fun but not a big deal for me.
(This was on a clean install)
Anything local on my laptop that is needed is synced to my desktop. Thankfully, the desktop never had guest account enabled.

I do look forward to a fix for this very odd bug though.

[MH01]

Using the Guest account is extremely rare. You probably wouldn't find anyone doing beta testing on such an account. Whatever was changed in the code for that function was probably believed insignificant, so it wasn't thoroughly tested.

The article mentions a thread that contains 45 posts, most of which aren't from people with this problem, who claim an occasional issue with something that only occurs in a particular method, sometimes but not always. This bug in Snow Leopard is apparently not easy to reproduce, and will not even work on a clean install. So if you were planning on buying a new Mac, this wouldn't even affect you.

It helps to maintain the proper perspective on the issue.

I see your point, but do you have stats in support that Guest accounts are extremely rare? Alot of public places i go to that have macs tend to use them. We use them on all our video editing mac at work. Guest accounts are a good idea, the problem is that the people who get screwed by this are current mac owners and above average users, in other words people who have been useing macs for a long time. Though i agree that a average user would not use a guest account, but people who have data they want to protect on thier account may very well setup a guest account on their computer.

Anything around accounts should always be tested.

The issue here is that SL was rushed to beat windows 7 out the door. A shame really.

[Blair230]

Has anyone who had Data loss chimed in on this forum? If so, what happened?

I just find it strange that with such a HUGE glaring issue it is not all over the news nor anywhere else...

If the issue exists, it definitely needs to be addressed. I just figured there would be more about it (and not just on the occasional forum on the internets)

[Val-kyrie]

I don't think he's grasping at straws at all. I've just gone into Time Machine to find that it's not backing up the VMWare Fusion virtual machine I'm working on. So while I'm backing up my project separately, I would have to recreate the VM from scratch in case of a failure. Time Machine is, in this specific case, useless, regardless of my relying on it in ignorant bliss.

Either way, this fault is pretty unforgivable, if it's true. I'm just glad I don't use the Guest account for anything.

As a tip: TM only backs up a VM properly if the VM is not in use. This has been covered in VMWare's forums where users have been unable to restore VMs which have been backed up while in use. For this reason, I exclude my VMs from TM and include them only from time to time when I do a manual backup with TM.

[zorinlynx]

This should be a wakeup call to ALL to make sure your backups are current, complete and accessible.

Yes, ALL THREE. There are many cases where one of those requirements is not met for whatever reason, making your backups mostly useless.

[Doctor Q]

I log in and my data is gone. My backup is corrupt. I send my Mac to a data recovery service and they can't get my files back.

Then I wake up screaming.

Seriously, this type of a bug is the stuff of nightmares for Apple and its customers.

[MH01]

See my earlier comment about lack of pity for those who don't backup. ;)

Data loss happens, either through virus' or situations like this. Just last night at Thanksgiving dinner I listened to a family member reminisce about 2 years of lost digital photos that were cooked when their XP machine was trashed by a virus. I reitterated the absolute necesity of backups to her and she's picking up an external drive this week.

Based on my observations Apple has at least made backups stupid easy and have advertised Time Machine enough that the average OS X user should know about it, and sheesh, it can't possibly be any easier to use.

Therefore, I come full circle about having little pity for those without backups. Even if money is tight you can get a used 500gig external USB drive for $30 or $40 and it'll do the job.

hmmm the major causes of data loss are not viruses or OS upgrades, these are the most rare occurances. Most common are user stuff ups and HD failures.

Did you even think of using recovery software to get the loss data back for your family?? What probably happened was that the virus trashed XP, and your family member did a fresh install formating the HD, i am very confident that their pictures could have been recovered.

I also hope you realize that backups do not recover 100% of your data, unless you are anal retentive in doing a backup every 30 min. If you do a weekly backup, and say your HD fails 5 days after, you have just kissed away 5 days of data.

[kupua]

Care to detail your allegations? I personally use a USB drive as an emergency boot drive and I haven't seen any issues like you describe. I also have two different Firewire drives attached (500GB FW400 and 1TB FW800) with no data losses. If any place, the corruption I'm finding is in the SATA internal drive.

Thus far you might consider your self lucky... but watch out.... big drives you listed...

10.6 changed Firewire and, possibly, USB. Lots of people with lots of issues. My external burner will no longer work with FW (will with USB). Lots of others with similar problems, so it's not just me.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2146924&start=30&tstart=0

[avidmacuser]

I'd like to hear back from all those people that strongly suggested the idea of upgrading to SN sooner than later so I could take advantage of all the new features and streamlining immediately. Surely they were not thinking that taking the time for the dust to settle to see if any such posts that say 'Snow Leopard Bug Responsible for Loss of User Data Gaining Notice' among other interesting issues people are having, would be a good idea before 'upgrading'. Perhaps they were not considering that valuable data loss may be at the top end of some people's worst expectations of what might happen this early in the Snow Leopard story. Perhaps they were so filled with excitement and anticipation of the hype, they forgot the reality of what first point releases mean. After all we can not compare it with, say, the automotive industry as an analogy. Because if we did, we might find that it of course is ridiculous to consider releasing a car or truck to the public where the automatic windows or (comparative to data loss in this case) transmission have yet to be assembled correctly.

Look at all these problems people are having! Some of them certainly more serious than others. For all those people that will reply with 'I'm not having any problems' - Yes yes, thats excellent for you... perhaps is only hundreds or thousands among millions, more or less - It matters only from the perspective of anyone involved right? - be it the end user experiencing the problems, or the developer taking bad reps that may arise from these kinds of issues - worse if they are widespread and many... Though I am truly happy for anyone without any major problems with Snow Leopard... and certainly feel bad for those (of us) that are experiencing them.

Lets hope that 10.6.2 will iron out 'most' of the wrinkles.

[*LTD*]

It seems this problem does not happen on Snow Leopard (upgraded from Leopard) upon enabling guest log-in, which suggests one possibility could be some Snow Leopard incompatibility with how the guest log-in was initially enabled. If you had it enabled in Leopard before upgrading and the problem happened without any changes to the guest account settings, then it could be from an incompatible setting between how Leopard and Snow Leopard handle the guest accounts. As such, try going to the Accounts system preferences and toggling the guest log-in setting to see if that refreshes the way the system is handling the guest account.

[MH01]

Has anyone who had Data loss chimed in on this forum? If so, what happened?

I just find it strange that with such a HUGE glaring issue it is not all over the news nor anywhere else...

If the issue exists, it definitely needs to be addressed. I just figured there would be more about it (and not just on the occasional forum on the internets)

It would have taken quite a while for people to realize that the data loss was related to having a guest account during an upgrade. And as LTD has pointed out, your average user does not use guest accounts. If it has made this site it means that it is an issue. Macrumors is good with the stuff that they publish.

[wonderbread57]

Who needs viruses and malware when the OS it self deletes stuff.

[Captain Planet]

I'm sure glad I don't have a guest account...

[djellison]

Just think if Apple lost data to do with .Mac/MobileMe.

They did.
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/25403


Can I ask any one of the 16 people who voted 'Positive' to this story one question..

why?

[Oshawapilot]

hmmm the major causes of data loss are not viruses or OS upgrades, these are the most rare occurances. Most common are user stuff ups and HD failures.

Really depends on their OS and level of self-inflicted system abuse, IMHO. In their case it was a poorly protected installation of XP.

Did you even think of using recovery software to get the loss data back for your family??

It was weeks/months before I even heard about the problem having occurred. I have recovery software on my Mac (needed it for a corrupted memory card once and it worked great) and would gladly have tried to recover the digital photos if nothing else, but by the time I heard anything had happened the computer was replaced by a brand new one and the old one given away on Kijiji.

I also hope you realize that backups do not recover 100% of your data, unless you are anal retentive in doing a backup every 30 min. If you do a weekly backup, and say your HD fails 5 days after, you have just kissed away 5 days of data.

Standard Time Machine backup interval is 1 hour which covers most people adequately. I have mine turned down to 3 hours since I found hourly backups overkill, but at the very least I have onsite an offsite backups that are never more then 24 hours old. If I'm doing something that requires more frequent backups (DV editing on occasion in my case) I'll turn that interval down, or make frequent saves to an external drive, or if I'm being extremely anal that day, two.

All that aside, any standard Time Machine operating it right out of the box would never have more then 59 minutes of lost data in the worst case scenario. For your average user, that's more the adequate.

Anyone running mission critical data is probably already backing up in a far more rigorous method than Time Machine anyways - onsite, offsite, RAID, etc..well, unless you're *cough cough* Danger. :p (Sorry, OT, but couldn't resist)

[RazHyena]

Who needs viruses and malware when the OS it self deletes stuff.

It just works.®

<><><>

I rolled back to Leopard last week, so no probs here. Maybe the next patch will put the majority of SL's flounderings to rest and I'll upgrade.

..or maybe not. 10.5 is workin just fine.

[gerrynjr]

This is how it happened to me:
1: Clean install
2: Create initial admin user using setup wizard
3. enable guest user
4. login as guest, notice that you get the shake window, look confused
5. login as your user
6. GASP all my files are gone! (All files I have are both backed up to my NAS, as well as my desktop, so data loss wasn't an issue for me)


My only guess is that the process the erases a guest user's files upon logout is running against the first admin user of the system upon a subsequent login after logging into guest. I have not been able to reproduce this under anything other than the first admin user created with the setup utility.

Initially I thought it was due to basic Unix permissions (first user on an OSX system is usually 501) but I later noticed that the guest user account has a unix ID of 201. I do know that when the guest user logs out all files owned by 201 are deleted... somehow it was applied to 501 as well.

So yeah... my main fix for now... is to create a generic "Admin" user, the create your user. It *should* be safe then to use the Guest account, and not lose any of your data. (Dont come chase me down if it still does though!)

This was also sent to apple in the form of a bug report...

[Erwin-Br]

Actually, as someone who has lost all data from a Windows failure, I can safely ask you to take your boring trolling elsewhere.

You lost your data because of a virus/malware or perhaps failing (cheap) hardware. Not because Windows decided to erase your profile after logging in with a Guest account. That happens only on a Mac. :D

I must say I'm very happy I resisted the temptation to upgrade immediately and become Apple's guinea pig.

[Amdahl]

If it has made this site it means that it is an issue. Macrumors is good with the stuff that they publish.

Which is another way of saying that they love to publish rumors about new products, but if there is possible 'news' about something bad, you won't hear it until they are SURE. Journalistic standards, and all that.

[VenusianSky]

hmmm the major causes of data loss are not viruses or OS upgrades, these are the most rare occurances. Most common are user stuff ups and HD failures.

Did you even think of using recovery software to get the loss data back for your family?? What probably happened was that the virus trashed XP, and your family member did a fresh install formating the HD, i am very confident that their pictures could have been recovered.

I also hope you realize that backups do not recover 100% of your data, unless you are anal retentive in doing a backup every 30 min. If you do a weekly backup, and say your HD fails 5 days after, you have just kissed away 5 days of data.

For Windows, I recommend a Task Scheduler task to run a robocopy job every x times per day/week. When using the /MIR (mirror) option in robocopy, it only copies new or updated files/directories. There are no prompts and you can even include an exclusion list of files (/XF) or folders (/XD). I also enable the log file output so I can review the copy process. I use this method to back up my documents and music to my Time Capsule, though I do not have it on a set schedule (currently run on demand).

robocopy.exe Source Destination /MIR
robocopy.exe c:\Music D:\Music_Backup /mir /XD:C:\Music\CrappyMusicThatIdontwanttobackup /LOG:C:\music_backup.log

MS updated robocopy in Windows 7 to include multi-threaded support with the /MT option. I haven't yet tested it, but it should make it significantly faster on a multi-core system, when copying to a local disk. I don't think robocopy is included in XP, but is part of the Resource Kit tools that can be downloaded from MS.

[jnc]

Finally, Apple have their answer to Vista!

[AidenShaw]

Call me anal-retentive, but I keep offsite backups of my absolutely essential files, mainly my digital pictures and anything not stored on the cloud, which nowadays, is increasingly little. :)

By the way, there's an interesting utility called ddrescue which can recover bad DVDs.

One feature is that if you make several copies of the DVD, it can merge the good blocks so that you can recover the data even if all of the DVD have some errors. (It does assume that errors are independent, and a particular sector isn't bad on all copies.)

[Eric S.]

well, if you are using a system with the guest account enabled, either you need to have a backup of your data, or don't have valuable data on that machine

This can be abbreviated: "either you need to have a backup of your data, or don't have valuable data" ;)

[synth3tik]

Staying with 10.5.8 until Apple recognizes data loss and fixes the bug. Staying on Leopard means I am not upgrading to Logic 9, which means Apple will not be getting my software dollars until SL is reasonably stable.

[baryon]

Sounds like quite a dangerous bug! But this proves once again that people should backup their stuff, especially before upgrading to a new OS!

[ikramerica]

I don't know if this is related but I came home yesterday from the Movies turned on my MacBook Pro and got a black screen that on the top said "No Bootable Drive Found, insert disc to continue"

I was able to restart and hold the Options key down and then select the hard drive and get back into SL but now several of my apps freeze and crash every 30-90 seconds after opening them.....

Sounds like your HD is failing. Not a fault of any OS, but of hardware. If you've backed up, replace the HD ASAP.

[ipoppy]

Yeah, but if you couple the Snow Leopard guest account data loss with a 18 month old dead Time Machine, you've got yourself a very pissed off customer.

HaHa. I just fixed my dead 18 months old TC but fortunately never had another account on my network:) And yes, someone is really piised off out there;)

[eastcoastsurfer]

I'm sure it's been said, but part of locking down OSX is to disable the Guest account unless you have a particular reason to need it (computer labs, etc...). You always want to lessen the attack surface by as much as possible regardless of the OS you are using.

[Scottsdale]

I had a guest account in Leopard, I upgraded to Snow Leopard and now I just realized I can't access the Account settings in System Preferences! I wonder if this is related to this story.

Did you click on the lock in the bottom left corner of the box, then enter your user password... that's it almost every time when people don't understand that. If you don't have access to anything in system just click the lock and enter password and accept... that easy.

[Rot'nApple]

This is not the only data loss, SL is also causing data loss by means of USB and FireWire External drives. What I don't understand is why this is taking apple so long to address this issue. ITS a BIG DEAL

Which is why I never install the latest and greatest. I'll wait for 10.6.6 or 10.6.7 before I think of even installing Snow Leopard and avoid the aggravation! Hope your situation improves...

[thompson11]

Not the end of the world, but I lost my /Users/Shared data when I upgraded. Irritatingly this contained my Parallels hdd file that I didn't backup with Time Machine (because daily 10gb binary backups are no fun on TM).

Oh well.

[dernhelm]

The issue here is that SL was rushed to beat windows 7 out the door. A shame really.

Any evidence that SL was "rushed"? I'm not buying it, myself. SL has had _way_ fewer issues than any other version of OS/X at this point in it's release. This single bug is certainly not enough to convince me that it wasn't ready, since it could've made it through anyway. At some point you have to stop testing and release - you are ALWAYS going to have bugs, and you can't test forever.

But maybe I'm just more understanding since we are right at the end of a 18 month release cycle ourselves... ;)

[BongoBanger]

Any evidence that SL was "rushed"? I'm not buying it, myself. SL has had _way_ fewer issues than any other version of OS/X at this point in it's release. This single bug is certainly not enough to convince me that it wasn't ready, since it could've made it through anyway. At some point you have to stop testing and release - you are ALWAYS going to have bugs, and you can't test forever.

I think it's this, the driver issues and the fact they're rushing out not one but two point releases in a very short period of time.

That said, I don't see the point in SL trying to beat W7 to market as neither is really going to impact the other's sales.

[nagromme]

Now that's a bad one.

Thank goodness I don't like Apple's guest accounts--they're not customizable enough--and so I always make my guest accounts out of "real" (non-admin) accounts.

[AidenShaw]

For Windows, I recommend a Task Scheduler task to run a robocopy job every x times per day/week.

Vista and Windows 7 have builtin backups with scheduling, no need to use command line tools. Go to "Control Panel" -> "Backup and Restore".

Also note that /MIR will delete the entire directory structure in some cases, so if you have a user error and delete part of the directory tree - robocopy will dutifully delete all those files on the "backup".

A more elegant solution is to get a Windows Home Server system. It will backup up to 10 systems on your network - even waking them from sleep to backup if necessary (and returning them to sleep).

Both Vista backup and WHS backup save old versions - so in the event of an accidentally deleted directory the latest backup version will show a missing directory, but older versions of backups will have your files.

(A 1TB WHS that's easily expandable to 7 TB is about $90 more than a 1 TB Time Capsule.)

[Bacvir]

It's true. Last week I logged in to Guest and then restarted (I'd "upgraded" to SL). Afterward, everything was lost from the Desktop and in all but one of my Documents folder of my Admin account. Over 100 GB gone. It was odd that a shortcut I made for the Document folder showed two more folders than were shown by clicking on Documents (still, 7 will missing). Coincident with the loss is an inability to register that computer with MobileMe (other computers register just fine). I had CCC and Time Machine, so nothing was lost. But still a shocking experience :eek:.

[polaris20]

I'm sorry I'm going to have to call BS on this one, or else extremely isolated. Not only can I not reproduce the problem on either snow leopard machine I have in front of me but I'm sure we would have seen something on engadget or macrumors much earlier.

So you tested it on two machines, and you're coming to the conclusion that the problem is BS?

How scientific of you. :rolleyes:

[beginnersview]

Thanks for the tip on the "feature" . . . but if the apps were there, then clicking the icon for something, say a Word file, would still produce the program, yes? Five days ago the apps file was visible, as was my hard drive icon (though not after second Snow Leopard installation).

But the degradation got to the point where nothing would even mount.

All I got was a string of question marks in my dock, no apps file, and nothing would work. When I would click on a Word document or photoshop document, I would get a message saying: No application designated for this action (or something along those lines), so I would search, and no applications were available. After Time Machine restore at three different dates (one ten days ago, one three months ago, and one from the beginning eleven months ago--in that order) no apps, nothing would work.

DAta files, however, seem to be intact (unlike those of several friends who have lost everything). Except of course for iPhoto files which have disappeared.

Any other suggestions?

As you can see I"m a user, not a tech person, and I am sitting in Bangladesh, several thousand miles from able technicians in Singapore (in spite of the "authorized Apple reseller" here in Dhaka).

cheers,
teekayess
17" MacBook Pro, 2.16 GHz, 2 GB 6p67 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, etc.

(I have not read all intervening replies... )

It does sound as though the hard drive is going bad.
Since you say you have a first generation Intel (that would be from the April-October 2006 production range) you may still be in warranty but only if you bought the AppleCare 3-year option. Of course, the warranty will ONLY replace the drive if they determine it has gone bad -- they will not get any missing data back for you.

To recap, it seems you have access to most of your user data, except for missing photos library data.

It is paramount that you:
(1) get your user data backed up off the drive as soon as possible, by any means that works (flash 'thumb' drive, external hard drive, whatever).
(2) verify if you have your data on any other data backup storage.
(3) and thus be able to determine if there is any user data on the MacBookPro internal drive which seems lost and is not available anywhere else. Such as the iPhoto pictures you mention. If those photos are not on any backup, and still not visible on the MacBookPro, that data is either gone and not recoverable, or will cost a lot to get back.
(4) If you must get back the missing user data off your drive when it seems to be not there (or drive not working), you can use a drive recovery service. I have an affiliation with DriveSavers, they typically charge in the range of $600-700 (USD) and up range to get data off dead/malfunctioning drives. But they will do a free evaluation. And there are other similar drive recovery companies.

Send my a private message if you wish details on any of this.

Note, Hard drives do have expected life spans, ranging from 3 to 5 years typically. After that range, the drive may continue to perform -- or not -- just depends. Some drives last and run for many years. Some conk out after only a few. Notebook drives tend to last less, because of all the moving, bumping around, and sometimes higher heat level.

[cliveren13]

This is not the only data loss, SL is also causing data loss by means of USB and FireWire External drives. What I don't understand is why this is taking apple so long to address this issue. ITS a BIG DEAL

This is so true have a western digital portable 250 gig passport with alot of stuff on it good thing i had it backed up on another machine turned on the system 2 days ago went to get a file from the passport nothing was there except a folder thought i was crazy unmounted it plugged it back in same thing only a folder everthing was gone APPLE needs to fix this

[kupua]

This is so true have a western digital portable 250 gig passport with a lot of stuff on it good thing i had it backed up on another machine turned on the system 2 days ago went to get a file from the passport nothing was there except a folder thought i was crazy unmounted it plugged it back in same thing only a folder everything was gone APPLE needs to fix this

you can plug it into another usb port, preferably on your computer not dock, and it should be found. cross the fingers (it works for me) but I would minimize doing this as it may disappear at any given moment. system says its there, you just can't get to it, cause when you pull the usb connector it says that its not ejected properly... good luck.

[cumanzor]

Justifying Apple already... Nice. How about the time to put back your files? how about you are on the road and you don't have your HD with you? How about you are working and lose inmediately all your info (and some customers)?

No no no. I'm not exactly known for defending Apple, but that guy is right. Doing backups is a MUST in any system and OS you are using, A MUST!

[Hellium]

Everyone just calm down!
This isnt a bug, it is a feature. Remember before SL, we were told that u will get 6-10Gb back? This is what they meant!

[Eric S.]

I think it's this, the driver issues and the fact they're rushing out not one but two point releases in a very short period of time.

Well 10.6.2 has not been released yet, only seeded to developers. It may be a while before it comes out. On the other hand if they do have a fix for this bug, I'd expect to see it sooner rather than later.

[SmugMac]

tested on my own machine (10.6.1). Files are still in tact.

Ditto. It's just Neowin. They do these sort of stories to cash in on page views to generate profit. Who knew?

[SmugMac]

Bad Apple, bad! Hope they fix it soon because this is a serious issue and their image will be damaged if they don't

But the issue doesn't exist. I have now tried it on all four Snow Leopard iMac's and a Mac Pro.

Firstly, the Guest Account is disabled by default in Snow Leopard.
Secondly, when I did enable the login and actually log in and out - then logged back into my account. No data loss!

Isolated incident at best. Wish Neowin would have actually tested the scenario before posting this flawed article. Then again, it is a self proclaimed 'Unprofessional Journalism' site.

[SmugMac]

Why we are hearing about this now?! This would have been news more than a month ago when SL was released.

It's getting close to the consumer release of Windows 7 and Windows fanboys are working overtime to dig up any possible dirt on Apple. It's quite pathetic really.

[pubwvj]

Didn't Apple screwed up Firewire drives destroying all the user's data and disk before? Apparently the testing is still not sufficient. I'll stick with MacOS 10.4.11. It is stable and does everything I need including continuing to run Classic applications such as children's software that never got ported to MacOSX. Apple's doing upgrades that are really downgrades - lost functionality...

[MH01]

But the issue doesn't exist. I have now tried it on all four Snow Leopard iMac's and a Mac Pro.

Firstly, the Guest Account is disabled by default in Snow Leopard.
Secondly, when I did enable the login and actually log in and out - then logged back into my account. No data loss!

Isolated incident at best. Wish Neowin would have actually tested the scenario before posting this flawed article. Then again, it is a self proclaimed 'Unprofessional Journalism' site.

Let me get this straight, you just tried 5 times to replicate a bug to delete your data?

[matt04]

Even though I am a brand ambassador for APPLE, this happened to me exactly as indicated in the Mac Rumours article. This is really serious. I lost all my data (and the point it's not if you have or not a backup, but if it can be defined a "bug" a software malfunction which could wipe off completely your hard disk!). Even Microsoft hasn't reached this level with Windows!
I contacted APPLE and they haven't treated seriously this issue. After many days still no clear explanation or official position from the company. I think it is unacceptable to sell an operating system with such a big flaw... clearly it has not been tested properly. If it has happened to all these people, I guess it could be replicated.
As Apple users, we have to admit when there are problems as we have to praise for the innovations brought by the company.
I invite people who had the same problem to get in touch together to check exactly in which conditions this happened and move forward...

[Amdahl]

Didn't Apple screwed up Firewire drives destroying all the user's data and disk before? Apparently the testing is still not sufficient. I'll stick with MacOS 10.4.11. It is stable and does everything I need including continuing to run Classic applications such as children's software that never got ported to MacOSX. Apple's doing upgrades that are really downgrades - lost functionality...

Yes, in OS 10.3.

[Hellium]

Ditto. It's just Neowin. They do these sort of stories to cash in on page views to generate profit. Who knew?

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10346974-263.htmll?tag=mncol;txt
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2194729
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2142272&start=60&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2157518&start=15&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2171494&tstart=0
...and many more on apple's discussion boards

[andy721]

ok first of all you don't have to put the title like everything is going to erase off of any account put the word guest in there FFS.
2nd who uses guest accounts except for businesses?
3rd there is a known issue that should have been fixed in the 10.6.1 update where when you switch from windows to mac from bootcamp it doesn't save the audio level settings under Snow Leopard for the internal speaker.

That's the only flaw I am having with SL. Other then that I've been happy with it.

[sam10685]

Good. You get what you pay for. In this case-- a full operating system upgrade... for 29 dollars. $9.99 in some cases.

[HLdan]

Machine: 17" MacBook Pro - first model introduced with Intel
• I installed Snow Leopard and my hard drive icon disappeared off the desktop.
• Then I noticed degradation of performance of routine tasks (click and drag, opening files)
• next programs started to lock up; machine turned to molasses
• text entry for anything (email, Word, etc.) limited to 6-8 characters then lockup for 15-30 seconds, sometimes longer
• searched for applications folder and it was missing
• went into time machine: apps folder missing
• went back as far as I could (11 months) and found only original apps file, but could not restore them by any means, starting with simple Time Machine restoration
• AFter three failed attempts at Time Machine restoration, I blanked the drive and reinstalled Leopard 10.5.8 and restored some of my programs, but now my iPhoto has gone missing.
• reinstalled twice, same result
• basic functions of other programs and operating system okay, but with iPhoto disappearing, I'm more than a little uneasy.

Question: what now?
:confused:
teekayess

I call BS on this one. I just love when threads like this come up on the front page news. We always seem to get new registrations with BS to help spread FUD. I'm not having any issues with multiple accounts on my Snow Leopard installs. :p

[3D0G]

Using the Guest account is extremely rare. You probably wouldn't find anyone doing beta testing on such an account.

And as LTD has pointed out, your average user does not use guest accounts.

2nd who uses guest accounts except for businesses?

Several posts have been implying that this isn't such a big deal because "no one uses Guest accounts", or, if they do, they mustn't be concerned about security. Well, I do use a Guest accounts for...guests. Like, for example, people who just want to use the internet when they are at my house and for whom I don't feel like setting up full accounts. I mean, that's the purpose of the Guest account, right? I don't expect iron-clad security from this kind of account, and of course I also have a backup plan, but I also wouldn't expect to lose my data either.

Am I alone here?

[theheadguy]

Don't worry, they'll fix it before SL comes out of beta.
...
Steve has no one to blame but himself. SL was clearly not ready to ship, and they just rushed it out the door because they needed to beat Windows 7's hype machine.
...
When an Apple product fails to impress, it is always due to operator error.
EXACTLY.

I read earlier on here where someone said the guest account was a feature that was rarely used. ************. It's a major feature that was in 10.5 that many schools and businesses use, in addition to the average home user. The main point of SL was to perfect "the world's most advanced operating system"... keyword: PERFECT.

Someone else also said it earlier... the list of bugs keeps getting longer. With the lack of major new features, I thought this would be a fantastic release due to QC. Oh wait, I forgot... operator error.

[apersianboyCOM]

This is precisely why I didn't buy SL at launch.

[Matthew Yohe]

But the issue doesn't exist. I have now tried it on all four Snow Leopard iMac's and a Mac Pro.

Firstly, the Guest Account is disabled by default in Snow Leopard.
Secondly, when I did enable the login and actually log in and out - then logged back into my account. No data loss!


You must have enabled a guest account on Leopard first, and then performed an upgrade, and then log into Guest first.

You have not ruled out this issue, and apple has already acknowledged the issue.

It exists.

[celticpride678]

I’m glad Apple is working on a fix for this. I am guessing it will be part of 10.6.2. Now, it might be coming out quicker because of this major bug fix, who knows?

[daneoni]

Only goes to reinforce my abstinence from upgrading

[offwidafairies]

im afraid i cant post what i really want to say as macrumors might suspend my account

[jnc]

Only goes to reinforce my abstinence from upgrading

I "upgraded", realised my mistake, and headed back to 10.5.. I'd go 10.4 if I could!

[daneoni]

I "upgraded", realised my mistake, and headed back to 10.5.. I'd go 10.4 if I could!

Hahaha...Tiger was/is indeed a pretty amazing OS

[heisetax]

Its hard for Apple to admit that they have problems with their hardware or software. It took Apple 8 months after MacWorld reported a problem with the 1st gen Intel Mac Pros. They also gave the answer that appeared to be the correct way to answer the problem. In this time my computer worked with more & more problems. I also could not get OS 10.5 to load or work. After Apple finally admitted to the problem & that I had called on it several times they finally agreed to fix it. It was a bad ATI X1900 video cards. But they replaced the Nvidia card that added a month later. Finally they had a third party repair company come out & do an in office repair. Now all works well as does OS 10.5.8. I've stopped even testing OS 10.6 on a spare drive. I'll wait for a couple more updates before I go any farther. With my income tax prep business that will be no sooner than next May. Its about time to lock down changes for the year. OS 10.6 has definately missed the cut. Now we see why there was nothing more to the new OS than a change from 32 to 64 bit & the elimination of PPC code. Some thought that a no feature update would go smoother than those with many new features. This new OS version proves that to be incorrect.

[heisetax]

Its hard for Apple to admit that they have problems with their hardware or software. It took Apple 8 months after MacWorld reported a problem with the 1st gen Intel Mac Pros. They also gave the answer that appeared to be the correct way to answer the problem. In this time my computer worked with more & more problems. I also could not get OS 10.5 to load or work. After Apple finally admitted to the problem & that I had called on it several times they finally agreed to fix it. It was a bad ATI X1900 video cards. But they replaced the Nvidia card that added a month later. Finally they had a third party repair company come out & do an in office repair. Now all works well as does OS 10.5.8. I've stopped even testing OS 10.6 on a spare drive. I'll wait for a couple more updates before I go any farther. With my income tax prep business that will be no sooner than next May. Its about time to lock down changes for the year. OS 10.6 has definately missed the cut. Now we see why there was nothing more to the new OS than a change from 32 to 64 bit & the elimination of PPC code. Some thought that a no feature update would go smoother than those with many new features. This new OS version proves that to be incorrect.

[Bubba Satori]

It's getting close to the consumer release of Windows 7 and Windows fanboys are working overtime to dig up any possible dirt on Apple. It's quite pathetic really.

Yeah, that's the ticket. It's a conspiracy. What flavor was that triple koolaid ?

http://riverdaughter.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/tin_foil.jpg

[thejadedmonkey]

But the issue doesn't exist. I have now tried it on all four Snow Leopard iMac's and a Mac Pro.

Firstly, the Guest Account is disabled by default in Snow Leopard.
Secondly, when I did enable the login and actually log in and out - then logged back into my account. No data loss!

Isolated incident at best. Wish Neowin would have actually tested the scenario before posting this flawed article. Then again, it is a self proclaimed 'Unprofessional Journalism' site.

I'm pretty sure that this isolated issue has been verified to in fact be an issue, by Apple, and Apple announced that they were working on a fix.

/anti-fanboi rant

[diehldun]

I'm sorry I'm going to have to call BS on this one, or else extremely isolated. Not only can I not reproduce the problem on either snow leopard machine I have in front of me but I'm sure we would have seen something on engadget or macrumors much earlier.

:confused:

Glad to hear that Apple has acknowledged the issue and is working on a solution.

[donga]

this is why it's always good to wait after a release until things have been worked out

[polaris20]

I love the armchair software testing experts:

"I tried it on my two or three computers, I couldn't replicate the problem, therefore it is BS and doesn't exist".

Come on guys, let's break through the reality distortion field and put down our Big Gulp of Apple Kool-Aid.

Two or three computers do not make an accurate survey. I would hope anyone with a high school diploma would know that.

[DanLD45]

This actually happened to me. i thought i did something wrong or touch something when installing some new software.

Good to know it wasn't me being stupid lol

Thanks to time machine it wasn't a huge issue just a pain to reinstall everything.

[iphones4evry1]

First it was Mobile Me last year, then T-mobile sidekick recently, and now Snow Leopard. You just can't trust "big brother" cloud computing any more.

Yeah, that's the ticket. It's a conspiracy. What flavor was that triple koolaid ?

http://riverdaughter.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/tin_foil.jpg

I knew it would come down to this eventually.

We have known our whole lives that it would eventually come. Day after day after day, we knew it was going to come ... and now it's here! :eek:

[Compile 'em all]

Hahaha...Tiger was/is indeed a pretty amazing OS

I always thought Leopard was a lot better than Tiger, and exponentially faster. At least from my experience.

[scroto]

But the issue doesn't exist. I have now tried it on all four Snow Leopard iMac's and a Mac Pro.

Firstly, the Guest Account is disabled by default in Snow Leopard.
Secondly, when I did enable the login and actually log in and out - then logged back into my account. No data loss!

Isolated incident at best. Wish Neowin would have actually tested the scenario before posting this flawed article. Then again, it is a self proclaimed 'Unprofessional Journalism' site.

Dude relax, you don't need to frantically try to disprove the issue by attempting to recreate it. Apple already admitted that it exists and I'm sure they'll fix it soon. Apple's just a corporation, it's not the end of the world if their reputation gets slightly tarnished. In fact they need a good humbling to knock them off their high horse. They have the media on their side and most people will never know about it anyway.

[skottichan]

I love the armchair software testing experts:

"I tried it on my two or three computers, I couldn't replicate the problem, therefore it is BS and doesn't exist".

Come on guys, let's break through the reality distortion field and put down our Big Gulp of Apple Kool-Aid.

Two or three computers do not make an accurate survey. I would hope anyone with a high school diploma would know that.

Yes, and a dozen or so people having the problem doesn't make it an accurate survey that it's a widespread problem.

Apple's on it, and for the small number of people having the problem, it'll hopefully be fixed.

[theheadguy]

Yes, and a dozen or so people having the problem doesn't make it an accurate survey that it's a widespread problem. Apple's on it, and for the small number of people having the problem, it'll hopefully be fixed.
Well, to be fair... Apple wouldn't be "on it" if it was only a "dozen or so people"... So while you are calling someone out for what appears to be exaggerating, maybe you should curb your exaggeration a bit as well. The problem was wide spread enough for Apple to push out a prepared statement on it, period. Enough with defending them to the death... they screwed up and acknowledged it. Let it go.

[macshill]

*********. That's not good :eek:

Can you imagine the outcry if Windows was doing this?

Which is why those "I'm a Pc. And I'm a Mac." ads are so incredibly laughable. :apple:

[JacobC1983]

To me, admitting and correcting mistakes is a far greater feat than to not acknowledge anything is wrong. This is where apple falters in my eyes. I am glad to see they admit to ***** up, and are quickly trying to remedy the situation. kudos for Apple for not letting problems continue for a few more months like they usually do.

[Peace]

Well, to be fair... Apple wouldn't be "on it" if it was only a "dozen or so people"... So while you are calling someone out for what appears to be exaggerating, maybe you should curb your exaggeration a bit as well. The problem was wide spread enough for Apple to push out a prepared statement on it, period. Enough with defending them to the death... they screwed up and acknowledged it. Let it go.

Plain old good PR. That's it.;)

[Macminiintel]

I love the armchair software testing experts:

"I tried it on my two or three computers, I couldn't replicate the problem, therefore it is BS and doesn't exist".

I have installed snow leopard on 28 iMacs at my college via upgrade means to keep all the Adobe CS4 Suites intact, I have also installed it on my own 3 Mac minis and MacBook all clean installs, no issues on any of the 28 iMacs or my own Macs, and my college uses the guest account as well as our own logins. I know since I help out in the iMac and eMac rooms, because the main I.T tech, just deal with windows lol.

i'll look today on a few more machines, but no one has reported it to the head of media. So I don't think its affecting our machines.

[ChazUK]

Ditto. It's just Neowin. They do these sort of stories to cash in on page views to generate profit. Who knew?

Do apple often respond "We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix." when a site posts page view generating lie? :confused:

Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/12/apple-aware-of-snow-leopard-that-bug-kills-data-is-working-on-a/

[MH01]

I have installed snow leopard on 28 iMacs at my college via upgrade means to keep all the Adobe CS4 Suites intact, I have also installed it on my own 3 Mac minis and MacBook all clean installs, no issues on any of the 28 iMacs or my own Macs, and my college uses the guest account as well as our own logins. I know since I help out in the iMac and eMac rooms, because the main I.T tech, just deal with windows lol.

i'll look today on a few more machines, but no one has reported it to the head of media. So I don't think its affecting our machines.

You have a bigger problem at hand mate, you college has decided to upgrade it macs to an OS that has just been released, a really stupid move. If you college had a credible IT department they would not move to SL till late next year. Though it sounds like the IT dept did not do the upgrades, whoever made that decision goofed up BIG time.

Just as a question, what do the windows machines run?

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

Got LOADS of extremely important data - so all I can say is that I am glad I didn't move away from 10.5.8 !!!

Couple this bug with HUGE firewire issues - I would probably be out of business by now if I upgraded...

:rolleyes::apple:

[knightlie]

You lost your data because of a virus/malware or perhaps failing (cheap) hardware. Not because Windows decided to erase your profile after logging in with a Guest account. That happens only on a Mac. :D

I'm not sure how you'd know how I lost data. ;) Actually it was because one day, for some random reason, Windows refused to boot past an empty blue screen and mouse pointer. Explorer.exe would not start, under any circumstances, and Microsoft had no fix for the issue. The hardware was not "cheap" or "failing," and I am fully protected against viruses. Fortunately, having used/suffered Windows wince 3.1, I'm smart enough not to use it for anything important, thus no really important data was lost.

Data loss owing to any OS in unacceptable, but the Windows apologists really need to keep quiet.

[MorphingDragon]

A, Dont use guest accounts.
B, Encrypt Your Home folder
C, Use parental controls.

IMO, anything wrong with Apple is blown out of proportion just because its Apple. People just end up going "meh, its windows" or "Why the hell did you buy a dell!?" or "Why in gods name did you buy a Zune?"

[MH01]

I'm not sure how you'd know how I lost data. ;) Actually it was because one day, for some random reason, Windows refused to boot past an empty blue screen and mouse pointer. Explorer.exe would not start, under any circumstances, and Microsoft had no fix for the issue. The hardware was not "cheap" or "failing," and I am fully protected against viruses. Fortunately, having used/suffered Windows wince 3.1, I'm smart enough not to use it for anything important, thus no really important data was lost.

Data loss owing to any OS in unacceptable, but the Windows apologists really need to keep quiet.

You did not actually lose you data at that point. My assumption would be that windows had a driver issue. There are numerous ways to correct this, and frankly very simple. The only way you would have lost your data would have been if the HD had actually failed or you decided to reinstall windows and format the HD.

If windows ever craps out on you, do not format your HD, all you data is still there, you just have to reinstall the OS, heck just do a new instance of windows and then use explorer to navigate to you old files. I have never ever had Windows delete any of my data, the only time I have ever lost data was due to a HD failure. The good thing is that HDs tend to start making funny noises before they crap out.

[inlovewithi]

I'm not sure how you'd know how I lost data. ;) Actually it was because one day, for some random reason, Windows refused to boot past an empty blue screen and mouse pointer. Explorer.exe would not start, under any circumstances, and Microsoft had no fix for the issue. The hardware was not "cheap" or "failing," and I am fully protected against viruses. Fortunately, having used/suffered Windows wince 3.1, I'm smart enough not to use it for anything important, thus no really important data was lost.

Data loss owing to any OS in unacceptable, but the Windows apologists really need to keep quiet.

All these Windows horror stories, I wonder why I never have any problems.

[Tommigun]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.

So if this had been a Windows bug, would people here still have said 'it's the user's fault for not backing up'?

[Tommigun]

All these Windows horror stories, I wonder why I never have any problems.

Same here. The problem is that Windows has like ten times as many users as Mac OS X, so the random flukes are much more common.

[BongoBanger]

All these Windows horror stories, I wonder why I never have any problems.

It's probably because you're competent.

[Macmel]

Actually, as someone who has lost all data from a Windows failure, I can safely ask you to take your boring trolling elsewhere.

But according to you, fanbois, that's what you can expect from a windows machine. That NEVER happens in OSX. And the truth is you don't even need a virus to do it, the OS does it on its own. Hilarious.
Being said that, my MBP with SL is running like a charm. Also my cheap PC, although is having some issues with the screen lately. No data loss, however.
And to finish, let me get this straight: if you lose your data in Windows, it's windows fault, but if you lose your data in Mac OSX it is your fault, right?.

[MorphingDragon]

Same here. The problem is that Windows has like ten times as many users as Mac OS X, so the random flukes are much more common.

Lets see what was the pretty common horror story for 95/98. "Your computer has performed an illegal operation." BSOD.

That really wasnt random flukes. WTF is an illegal operation@!?

[BongoBanger]

Lets see what was the pretty common horror story for 95/98. "Your computer has performed an illegal operation." BSOD.

That really wasnt random flukes. WTF is an illegal operation@!?

It's also over a decade ago. Around about the time Mac OS still had viruses.

[andy721]

Several posts have been implying that this isn't such a big deal because "no one uses Guest accounts", or, if they do, they mustn't be concerned about security. Well, I do use a Guest accounts for...guests. Like, for example, people who just want to use the internet when they are at my house and for whom I don't feel like setting up full accounts. I mean, that's the purpose of the Guest account, right? I don't expect iron-clad security from this kind of account, and of course I also have a backup plan, but I also wouldn't expect to lose my data either.

Am I alone here?

But what's the point you cant save their stuff when they do come over to use your computer. Most of my friends that come over are true friends so they wouldn't mess around and break it, if you have friends that would I wouldn't call them much friends. Kinda immature if you as me.

[andy721]

EXACTLY.

I read earlier on here where someone said the guest account was a feature that was rarely used. ************. It's a major feature that was in 10.5 that many schools and businesses use, in addition to the average home user. The main point of SL was to perfect "the world's most advanced operating system"... keyword: PERFECT.

Someone else also said it earlier... the list of bugs keeps getting longer. With the lack of major new features, I thought this would be a fantastic release due to QC. Oh wait, I forgot... operator error.

Not really people will get the latest operating system only because it's new and has new features and so on. They bypass the flaws hoping for updates.

[MH01]

Lets see what was the pretty common horror story for 95/98. "Your computer has performed an illegal operation." BSOD.

That really wasnt random flukes. WTF is an illegal operation@!?

Comparing windows 95/98 to SL, now that makes sense.

Though if your going to do that

Data deleted by OS
Win 95 = 0
Win 98 = 0
SL = 1


But jokes aside, a BSOD on 95/98 is completely irrelevant to this issue. Just accept that its a bug, apple messed up and lets hope its fixed asap.

BTW 95/98 were fine, if you going to poke fun and M$ OS use ME, that was a shocker!

[dernhelm]

BTW 95/98 were fine, if you going to poke fun and M$ OS use ME, that was a shocker!

ME was bad. But that's about the only truly BAD OS I've ever worked with. Vista was bloated and annoying, but not truly bad (I still avoided it, since I liked XP better). But the point is, every OS has it's warts. Some of Microsoft's have been pretty glaring up until Windows 7, and the virus thing will continue to haunt them so long as they maintain 90%+ marketshare, but OS/X is not without it's share of stupidity.

But this is not an example of anything more than a bug. It isn't a design flaw in the OS, it is simply a bug. And a pretty rare one at that. If you want to pick holes in the design of parts of OS/X, you can do a lot better than pointing at this bug. Start reading Gruber's stuff - that would be a good start.
:cool:

[andylyon]

This has also now been reported in the UK and is the top story on the Technology section of the BBC News website - must be major news if it's about Apple and NOT about the iPhone!

Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8304229.stm)

AnDy

[Macmel]

Any evidence that SL was "rushed"? I'm not buying it, myself. SL has had _way_ fewer issues than any other version of OS/X at this point in it's release. This single bug is certainly not enough to convince me that it wasn't ready, since it could've made it through anyway. At some point you have to stop testing and release - you are ALWAYS going to have bugs, and you can't test forever.

But maybe I'm just more understanding since we are right at the end of a 18 month release cycle ourselves... ;)

So they didn't upgrade computers with guest accounts activated? I wonder what kind of test do they make... Because that sounds pretty much as a standard test.

[hagjohn]

I'm glad that Apple acknowledged the bug and is working on fixing it. Whether it's rare or not, is irrelevant.

[MH01]

ME was bad. But that's about the only truly BAD OS I've ever worked with. Vista was bloated and annoying, but not truly bad (I still avoided it, since I liked XP better). But the point is, every OS has it's warts. Some of Microsoft's have been pretty glaring up until Windows 7, and the virus thing will continue to haunt them so long as they maintain 90%+ marketshare, but OS/X is not without it's share of stupidity.

But this is not an example of anything more than a bug. It isn't a design flaw in the OS, it is simply a bug. And a pretty rare one at that. If you want to pick holes in the design of parts of OS/X, you can do a lot better than pointing at this bug. Start reading Gruber's stuff - that would be a good start.
:cool:

Completely agree with you. Its just a bug, and for those effected, potentially very nasty. Windows 7 and SL have issues and will continue to have them. I just kinda find it funny that some people are in apologist mode and are trying to justify this bug by raising windows past failures. If this happened in Windows 7, the ***** storm would be just amazing, cause it happened on OS X apple fanbois are blaming users for not backing up.

Having been with apple for 15 years I am really really really peeved that I do not qualify for the triple kool-aid that some fanbois on this forum are on. Does apple sent this stuff out, anyone have a link to a online shop? I have to try this stuff!! Just for a day I want to experience complete denial that Apple can do anything wrong!

[Macmel]

I have installed snow leopard on 28 iMacs at my college via upgrade means to keep all the Adobe CS4 Suites intact, I have also installed it on my own 3 Mac minis and MacBook all clean installs, no issues on any of the 28 iMacs or my own Macs, and my college uses the guest account as well as our own logins. I know since I help out in the iMac and eMac rooms, because the main I.T tech, just deal with windows lol.

i'll look today on a few more machines, but no one has reported it to the head of media. So I don't think its affecting our machines.

Rounding up, there's around 100 million computers in the world. Again rounding up, about 10 % are Macs, that is, 10 million Apple computers. You have tested 28, all of them with the exact same configuration (both hardware and software), which means more or less the same than trying on the same system 28 times. Let's assume that you tried on 28 different Macs. That is you have tried 0.00028 % of Apple's computers out there. And that's, according to you, statistically significant.
Also, the fact that Apple has already acknowledged the problem, to you means less than your highly reliable test on the huge amount of 28 computers. OK.

[MH01]

Rounding up, there's around 100 million computers in the world. Again rounding up, about 10 % are Macs, that is, 10 million Apple computers. You have tested 28, all of them with the exact same configuration (both hardware and software), which means more or less the same than trying on the same system 28 times. Let's assume that you tried on 28 different Macs. That is you have tried 0.00028 % of Apple's computers out there. And that's, according to you, statistically significant.
Also, the fact that Apple has already acknowledged the problem, to you means less than your highly reliable test on the huge amount of 28 computers. OK.

Its posts like that, that apply logic and reasoning that completely ruin discussions. I hope your ashamed of this post!!!!!!!

[MorphingDragon]

Comparing windows 95/98 to SL, now that makes sense.

Though if your going to do that

Data deleted by OS
Win 95 = 0
Win 98 = 0
SL = 1


But jokes aside, a BSOD on 95/98 is completely irrelevant to this issue. Just accept that its a bug, apple messed up and lets hope its fixed asap.

BTW 95/98 were fine, if you going to poke fun and M$ OS use ME, that was a shocker!

95/98 Gold releases were extremely bad. The corrupting OS would delete your files anyway. So me and my illegal operations would beg to differ.

[3D0G]

But what's the point you cant save their stuff when they do come over to use your computer.

Most of my friends/guests generally don't need to save any stuff on my computer. Most of them just want to use the Internet, or if they do save an occasional file, they would want to save it off to a USB or email it to have at their own home later anyway. For the few that come over all the time and actually do work where they need to save files permanently on my computer, I do in fact set up real, non-guest, accounts for them.

Most of my friends that come over are true friends so they wouldn't mess around and break it, if you have friends that would I wouldn't call them much friends.

First of all, who said that *all* my guests are friends? Sometimes I have people over whom I have met just recently and/or otherwise don't know.

Second, my friends wouldn't knowingly screw up my computer, but some of my friends (as with some friends of most people, including you, I expect) aren't the most computer literate and might innocently change some settings or download/install something seemingly minor into my root/admin account. Again, not a purposeful screw-up, but why take the chance? Especially when it's so easy to point them to the existing Guest account, which is exactly its purpose!

Third, you said it yourself: "Most of my friends that come over are true friends so they...". OK, so, what about the other friends? I suspect you meant the same thing I did--that they might accidentally screw something up or change settings which you may not want in your account.

Fourth, why are you getting personal about what kind of friends I have?

Kinda immature if you as me.

Immature? Again, why are you getting personal about it?

[astranovus]

There are more than 1 billion PCs on this planet and Apple does not have a marketshare of 10%. 3-5% would be more realistic.

I for one use Windows and Mac OSX and this bug in Snow Leopard is an absolute showstopper. Losing all of ones data is about as bad as it gets. Unforgivable really.

On the whole Mac OSX and Windows have been pretty reliable over the last 5 years, but this is one hell of a bug and really needs to be sorted quickly.

Once in a while everybody makes a mistake and operating systems are pretty complex beasts nowadays.

I just wish all of this Mac is more reliable than PC malarky would stop.

I have been running Vista since early 2007 and Windows 7, Beta, RC and now RTM since the end of 2008.

Besides two minor driver issues (not MS fault) early 2007 on Vista, I have had zero problems. No viruses. spyware, system hangups or anything else.

I have had a few hangups and a lot of permission repair issues on Mac OSX, but no real showstoppers.

People need to keep things in pespective.


Rounding up, there's around 100 million computers in the world. Again rounding up, about 10 % are Macs, that is, 10 million Apple computers. You have tested 28, all of them with the exact same configuration (both hardware and software), which means more or less the same than trying on the same system 28 times. Let's assume that you tried on 28 different Macs. That is you have tried 0.00028 % of Apple's computers out there. And that's, according to you, statistically significant.
Also, the fact that Apple has already acknowledged the problem, to you means less than your highly reliable test on the huge amount of 28 computers. OK.

[MH01]

95/98 Gold releases were extremely bad. The corrupting OS would delete your files anyway. So me and my illegal operations would beg to differ.

So are you saying that this Bug in SL is okay cause you had a bad experience in 95/98???

Heard of Xp, Vista or windows 7? If you still using 95/98, which is long long unsupported by m$, I have little sympathy for your illegal operations errors ;)

And explain how 95/98 were bad at their time? Extremely bad?? please...

[edesignuk]

Mainstream UK media (BBC) have now picked up on it.

Data losses in Snow Leopard bug (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8304229.stm).

[MorphingDragon]

So are you saying that this Bug in SL is okay cause you had a bad experience in 95/98???

Heard of Xp, Vista or windows 7? If you still using 95/98, which is long long unsupported by m$, I have little sympathy for your illegal operations errors ;)

And explain how 95/98 were bad at their time? Extremely bad?? please...

I never said the bug was okay... ever.

Im guessing you used 95b or 98SE??

[kilowattradio]

This is interesting. When I installed SL on my Mac mini 2006 my guest account was removed. I didn't think anything about it at the time because I didn't lose any data.
:eek:

[dernhelm]

So they didn't upgrade computers with guest accounts activated? I wonder what kind of test do they make... Because that sounds pretty much as a standard test.

I bet they did upgrade computers with guest accounts activated and still didn't see the bug. There seems to be more to this than simply having a guest account activated. The first law of software support - don't confuse the language in the bug report with the root of the problem.

[vvebsta]

slow week for rumors it seems :p

[polaris20]

Yes, and a dozen or so people having the problem doesn't make it an accurate survey that it's a widespread problem.

Apple's on it, and for the small number of people having the problem, it'll hopefully be fixed.

If Apple's on it, I'm willing to bet a shiny iPhone that it's more than 12 people.

I have installed snow leopard on 28 iMacs at my college via upgrade means to keep all the Adobe CS4 Suites intact, I have also installed it on my own 3 Mac minis and MacBook all clean installs, no issues on any of the 28 iMacs or my own Macs, and my college uses the guest account as well as our own logins. I know since I help out in the iMac and eMac rooms, because the main I.T tech, just deal with windows lol.

i'll look today on a few more machines, but no one has reported it to the head of media. So I don't think its affecting our machines.

I've installed Windows XP probably several thousand times by now (mostly by image, but you get the idea). Even if I had the same issue on every single one, it'd still be a small sample size of the install base. 28 computers isn't exactly to scale either.

[blybug]

Don't get me wrong, it's a serious bug and it's potentially a PITA for anyone who encounters it, but really...in an era of <$100 1TB external hard drives and the utter simplicity of Time Machine, the amount of pity I feel for people who don't backup anymore is dropping exponentially by the month.
+1

[MH01]

I never said the bug was okay... ever.

Im guessing you used 95b or 98SE??

Currently I run 10.5, 10.6 , xp, vista and win 7 on various machines.

Frankly I remember little about my 95/98 experiences, I just remember that they worked and I got my work done.

[kallisti]

But what's the point you cant save their stuff when they do come over to use your computer. Most of my friends that come over are true friends so they wouldn't mess around and break it, if you have friends that would I wouldn't call them much friends. Kinda immature if you as me.


I've enabled the Guest account in the past for when inlaws come to stay with us from out of town. They need internet access and email access, nothing more. They don't need to save anything. Using Guest was just convenient in those circumstances. It also gave them a sense of privacy since their browsing history was wiped on logout--not vital, but still a nice little perk.

[ericinboston]

+1

I agree...and have been a technologist since the very early 80s and work in high tech today.

However, I own 6 computers and I back up only 1 of them about 2 times a year. Average users (and even advanced users) never ever back up their data/computer/whatever. Yes, it is somewhat easy to use a program on the Mac or Windows to back up the data. But people just never do it. Even if they can schedule it. There are countless reasons why, but they just don't back up. It's not that they don't WANT to have a nice recovery set in case the house explodes, but they just seemingly feel there is no need or at least feel there is an extremely remote chance of a catastrophic all-your-stuff-is-gone scenario (like the odds of your house exploding and literally every single thing is totally unrecoverable). And contrary to belief, there is a high percentage of Windows users out there who own a computer for 4+ years without any glitches/data loss and purchase a new machine...and they are then concerned about HOW to migrate the data (which is very simple even if you did it manually copying data to an external hard drive...but there are plenty of $20 programs to automate it for you as well as the free migration tool built into Windows).

I've had a few drive crashes in my 29+ years but every one was recoverable without a backup. Maybe this knowledge or luck is what keeps me from backing up more often. Or...maybe it's me wondering why I need to back up 500GB of movies/mp3s/data every month to a 2nd drive which is just as likely as the first to fail (and no, I'm not going to back up 500GB to 100+ dvds). And eventually, yes, I/you will need more drive space for backup(s). And, finally, a backup is never a 100% guarantee. Never.

I'm just saying that backups are not a reality for 99% of the users out there for a multitude of reasons. Businesses? Yes...they normally have legal obligations as well as "compliance" obligations...not to mention they would very likely go out of business in a week if data got nuked and there was no "backup". Let's also not forget that so much of our lives and computer usage is now "stored" on the internet...pictures on Shutterfly, email on Google/Yahoo/Hotmail, online "lockers" if you really want to access your data truly anywhere in the world and/or if you are unsure how to backup your own computer, etc. In the eyes of so many people these days: "There ain't much data left on my personal computer".

-Eric

[Kapital]

Machine: 17" MacBook Pro - first model introduced with Intel
• I installed Snow Leopard and my hard drive icon disappeared off the desktop.
• Then I noticed degradation of performance of routine tasks (click and drag, opening files...................etc

Question: what now?
:confused:
teekayess

Teekayess

You may have a HD bad block problem - a failing HD
Have you checked your SMART status
Free using http://www.volitans-software.com
Apples' smart status in about this mac is not dependable.

I had very similar problems. Your backup may be failing because you cannot copy files from a bad sector or block. It will just stop your backup which will then fail.
Try backup manually to another HD (you should always have 2). If you encounter copy errors then I would heavily suspect a failing HD.

If you have a failing on SMART status then recover what you can and change your hard drive - use the opportunity to upgrade to bigger or faster and then look at partition options (another subject).

good luck

[*LTD*]

Interesting point posted by asdasd, over at AI:

I dont think the bug as reported could be true.

user logs in as guest.
Logs out.
Operating system asks if he wants to delete folder.
Ok, and it deletes.

At that stage the deletion code can have no rights to remove the default home folder. The process will be running as the user logged in.

Furthermore nobody has reported that is took a real long time to log out of their guest account - a sure sign of stuff being deleted from a larger account. It could take minutes, even up to half an hour, to delete a home dir. They dont do anything special with regards to API afaik, so they traverse the directory list, and delete filenodes.

However something then happens on login. It is possible that the existence of the guest user has somehow changed the user_ids elsewhere in the system. And that the user is logging into an account with a uid of (say) 502, not 501 - which would create a new home folder.

If anybody on these forums - which are large - sees this can you confirm anything like this.

That means the data could be there. Certainly recoverable in most cases.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1498551&postcount=81

[andy721]

I've enabled the Guest account in the past for when inlaws come to stay with us from out of town. They need internet access and email access, nothing more. They don't need to save anything. Using Guest was just convenient in those circumstances. It also gave them a sense of privacy since their browsing history was wiped on logout--not vital, but still a nice little perk.

Thank god I have my computer in my room, and all my in-laws are dead 0_o, jk

[filmweaver]

Kinda like a layoff, not an issue unless it happens to you. They should nut up and fix this before they release updated Pro Apps.

[seedster2]

While I am sure some are sensationalizing this in a gotcha attempt, it's amazing that the usual "macrumors apple defense team" is still in denial that this data loss is real.

Apple has even acknowledged the problem and working on a fix. It's real. stop drinking the kool-aid and grow up. No corporation is perfect. You cannot possibly recreate every scenario when beta testing. That's why they sell to early adopters so they can continue the beta testing on their behalf;)

This just debacle underscores why corporations and professionals don't run out and upgrade right away. And to the IT assistant who upgraded ~30 or so computers to SL, your IT dep't is bonkers. updating their entire mac environment to a new OS without proper testing is lunacy

[Amdahl]

Mainstream UK media (BBC) have now picked up on it.

Data losses in Snow Leopard bug (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8304229.stm).

Once the BBC has it, you can be sure a Nobel Prize will follow.

[Winni]

Why we are hearing about this now?! This would have been news more than a month ago when SL was released.

MacRumors is very slow this time. German (online) magazines have been writing about this for quite a while now, and Apple confirmed the problem but so far their developers are unable to locate the source of the problem and fix it.

[locust76]

I've had a few drive crashes in my 29+ years but every one was recoverable without a backup.

Then you've never had a real drive crash... Restoring a drive that, when turned on, only goes "whiiiiiiiiiirrrr-CLICK.... whiiiiiiiine-CLICK..." is impossible without spending loads of $$ per megabyte.

[*LTD*]

MacRumors is very slow this time. German (online) magazines have been writing about this for quite a while now, and Apple confirmed the problem but so far their developers are unable to locate the source of the problem and fix it.

Seems to be at least somewhat rare, and definitely doesn’t occur in all cases. Seems that it's difficult to reproduce as well.

Best course of action would be disable the Guest account and keep the issue in perspective.

But if Apple so much as hiccups, everyone's all over it. It's Apple, and these things are unexpected and uncharacteristic of the company. When your brand is synonymous with quality and desirability, this kind of coverage is bound to happen.

[locust76]

And to the IT assistant who upgraded ~30 or so computers to SL, your IT dep't is bonkers. updating their entire mac environment to a new OS without proper testing is lunacy

This. In my company we've had 100% working installations of Vista for well over a year, (yet only 2 computers out of over 600 have it), and we've been rigorously testing Windows 7. Even then, 99.9% of our computers run XP and will continue to do so until the hardware croaks. Upgrading OSes quickly is absolute madness.

[Mattie Num Nums]

Once the BBC has it, you can be sure a Nobel Prize will follow.

Yeah I heard they give those things away in Cereal boxes now.

Interesting point posted by asdasd, over at AI:

I dont think the bug as reported could be true.

user logs in as guest.
Logs out.
Operating system asks if he wants to delete folder.
Ok, and it deletes.

At that stage the deletion code can have no rights to remove the default home folder. The process will be running as the user logged in.

Furthermore nobody has reported that is took a real long time to log out of their guest account - a sure sign of stuff being deleted from a larger account. It could take minutes, even up to half an hour, to delete a home dir. They dont do anything special with regards to API afaik, so they traverse the directory list, and delete filenodes.

However something then happens on login. It is possible that the existence of the guest user has somehow changed the user_ids elsewhere in the system. And that the user is logging into an account with a uid of (say) 502, not 501 - which would create a new home folder.

If anybody on these forums - which are large - sees this can you confirm anything like this.

That means the data could be there. Certainly recoverable in most cases.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1498551&postcount=81


Apple acknowledged the bug. Get over it Apple isn't perfect.

[polaris20]

Then you've never had a real drive crash... Restoring a drive that, when turned on, only goes "whiiiiiiiiiirrrr-CLICK.... whiiiiiiiine-CLICK..." is impossible without spending loads of $$ per megabyte.

Nah, you can get that back sometimes. Stick it in the freezer in a ziplock bag for about 30 minutes. SpinRite does wonders too.

[avidmacuser]

Yeah I heard they give those things away in Cereal boxes now.




Apple acknowledged the bug. Get over it Apple isn't perfect.

We acknowledge that denial is not only a river in egypt. Get over it. No body's 'perfet' (<- :D)

[teekayess]

Did you read my post? Your hard drive is failing (most likely). You'll need to get it repaired. If you can't fix it yourself (sounds like you're not interested in that), then you'll have to find someone who you can take it to. If you're in warranty, Apple will replace that drive. If you didn't have a backup, though, then figure on your data being lost (though sounds like you've got everything but pictures). If you haven't yet, back up everything you can, and then get that to someone who can fix it for you.

jW

EDIT: and just in case you can't figure out what I'm saying, your problem has absolutely nothing to do with Snow Leopard. This is a hardware problem.


Yes, I certainly read (and understood) your post. According to every diagnostic I have run (three different programs run multiple times) the hard drive is fine. It was replaced in December. What isn't fine is the absence of apps, the deletion of apps in Time Machine. And now the deletion of iPhoto. At least a half dozen Mac users, some more, some less sophisticated than I, and the "Apple authorized dealer" in Dhaka have looked at the problem and the conclusion is software.

I don't care what it is as long as it can be fixed. But right now I'm running Leopard 10.5.8 and everything is smooth and wonderful, except for the fact that I am having to download new apps., some at expense.

And yes, I did an upgrade on Snow Leopard, twice, then I did a clean install twice (with a new disc). And the damage appears to already have been done. Time machine was used three times at major intervals of backup and no apps.

cheers,
teekayess

[cumanzor]

Interesting point posted by asdasd, over at AI:

I dont think the bug as reported could be true.

user logs in as guest.
Logs out.
Operating system asks if he wants to delete folder.
Ok, and it deletes.

At that stage the deletion code can have no rights to remove the default home folder. The process will be running as the user logged in.

Furthermore nobody has reported that is took a real long time to log out of their guest account - a sure sign of stuff being deleted from a larger account. It could take minutes, even up to half an hour, to delete a home dir. They dont do anything special with regards to API afaik, so they traverse the directory list, and delete filenodes.

However something then happens on login. It is possible that the existence of the guest user has somehow changed the user_ids elsewhere in the system. And that the user is logging into an account with a uid of (say) 502, not 501 - which would create a new home folder.

If anybody on these forums - which are large - sees this can you confirm anything like this.

That means the data could be there. Certainly recoverable in most cases.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1498551&postcount=81

This. It actually makes a lot of sense. I don't see --how-- it would be possibly for data to be actually deleted, unless there is a BIG bug causing this. To me this always looked like a issue with permissions.

Then again, some reports insist that data was actually lost and cannot be recovered. What's the official response from Apple?

[mytdave]

This deletion bug would not exist if Apple wasn't so paranoid and would implement a public beta program. This major bug isn't their only problem though. I've noticed quality assurance slipping quite a bit. I myself have one of the bad MacBook Pro laptops. :(

[Mattie Num Nums]

Regardless its an issue, its been acknowledged by Apple as such. It doesn't matter how many people it effects this is a really large potential issue. So spin it anyway you want to about how many people it effects or trying to make it seem like its not possible. Its an acknowledged issue. Apple stepped up and acknowledged it now they need to fix it fast.

[ss957916]

Wow. I downgraded shortly after installing Leopard and am now even more pleased I did. What a complete mess SL is.

But is the data actually lost? Or can it be recovered?

[ericinboston]

Then you've never had a real drive crash... Restoring a drive that, when turned on, only goes "whiiiiiiiiiirrrr-CLICK.... whiiiiiiiine-CLICK..." is impossible without spending loads of $$ per megabyte.

Oh for Pete's sake...A "crash" is not a single definition.

Yes, I've had drives that click and whir and make all sorts of noises and YES...I say YES...I was able to recover the data. Why? Well, in my particular case in such said crash definition, my drive was not 100% full. The "failed" piece(s) of the drive was not where my data resided. I connected the drive as a slave (back in the day of IDE) and was able to copy my data off it. I was lucky.

Yes, I've also seen users' drives that are totally gone. Sure, I could have pointed my customer to a restoration company and paid $795 for the drive to be pulled apart and ATTEMPTED to get back files/folders (much like how the Feds will try to recover deleted/destroyed files)...but that was unrealistically expensive...there was no value.

The point is that there is no single definition of a "backup"...nor of a "crash".

99% of the average to above average computer users who use their computer for non-work activities (ie: not a home business or work for an employer) do not back up their machines mainly because the risk is presumed low...low risk of a problem and low risk that the problem is serious...and low risk that the problem is irreversible. Add to that that all users come to terms with "what they can afford to lose"...can they afford to lose some pix? Maybe...maybe they are already on Shutterfly...or emailed to friends/family. Can they afford to lose email?...in this day and age of most people having at least an online Google or Yahoo account I would say they have no worries of losing the emails. More "Can they afford to lose ______" questions can be asked and are asked by the average user....and since most users are not buying and using backup programs (either included in an OS or $25 for your favorite off-the-shelf) then we must assume they, for whatever reason, are purposely CHOOSING NOT to back up.

As someone mentioned before I and re-stated earlier, the backup software solutions are cheap (free-$50 in the PC world) and very easy to use and also offer a wide range of "backup" solutions. But people still do not back up. Everyone knows they should back up...just like they should keep their tax records (and copies of them) for 10 years...and should keep copies of all their critical life paperwork in a fireproof box or bank's safety deposit box...and should read the 38 page user manual with that new dvd player before setting it up.

It's all in presumed risk.

-Eric

[Nuvi]

Its too bad that SL is turning out to be the new Vista... However, I have to say that personally I have had only minor problems with SL. That said this might have been potential disaster for me since I have quest account enabled due to Orbicule Undercover installation. Anyway, its strange that "tuning" upgrade like SL is turning out to be one with full of critical bugs.

[celtikmind]

First the Java crap, then SATA problems, Printer drivers and now to top it off, data loss? Data loss on a Mac? Seriously... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Apple?! :o

How about focusing a little less on the "mega-ossom video" features of the iPhone/iNano for a while and get the Mac side of things working perfectly again for a change? :mad:

Ever since the iPhone appeared Mac got more or less shelved. Good thing it's October... :rolleyes:

[arogge]

The bug has been reported at PC World. Mr. Windows Box is finally able to laugh at Mr. Mac!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/173497/snow_leopard_bug_deletes_all_user_data.html

This is probably why Apple has been hesitant to pre-install 10.6. This is also why I have a policy against installing software updates and new versions of operating systems. Some people suggest always doing a "clean" install whenever Apple or Microsoft decide that the point-updates are over and it's time to pay up for a new DVD installation disc. The problem is that I would lose all of my user preferences, hardware calibrations, software preferences, drivers, and anything else that was on the hard drive before it was reformatted. Then there is the additional risk of unknown incompatibilities and ruining a good system only to get some new "features" that are useless to the job. If it ain't broke... don't install that software update!

[iAlex]

Its too bad that SL is turning out to be the new Vista... However, I have to say that personally I have had only minor problems with SL. That said this might have been potential disaster for me since I have quest account enabled due to Orbicule Undercover installation. Anyway, its strange that "tuning" upgrade like SL is turning out to be one with full of critical bugs.

Snow Leopard is the new Vista? ~ Thaaaaaaat's a really big stretch... Time to put down the crack pipe... :rolleyes:

[Concorde Rules]

Wow another bug which... doesn't affect either of my computers.

Whats new?

Computers in sig, one even with a64 bit kernel forced and 10.6.2 all working perfectly here.

10.6 isn't a the new vista, because Vista was a pile of ****. Thankfully my friends are taking advantage of the student W7 deals and im upgrading them one by one.

[celtikmind]

Snow Leopard is the new Vista? ~ Thaaaaaaat's a really big stretch... Time to put down the crack pipe... :rolleyes:

While it might not be the new Vista yet it seems to have a good track record of becoming one, this far... ;)

Especially since Apple seems to give Mac and OS X little attention these days in favour of the iPhone and what not.

[satcomer]

Especially since Apple seems to give Mac and OS X little attention these days in favour of the iPhone and what not.

That is exactly what I have been thinking.

[RazHyena]

Snow Leopard is the new Vista? ~ Thaaaaaaat's a really big stretch... Time to put down the crack pipe... :rolleyes:

Maybe a little, but Snow Leopard's poor quality is really unbecoming of a company like Apple.

Time to put the pom poms down. ;)

[scroto]

I remember alot of driver issues but what was the worst bug in Vista? This is really bad I don't remember Vista deleting files.

[xbjllb]

:rolleyes:

Apple strikes again.

[MorphingDragon]

Maybe a little, but Snow Leopard's poor quality is really unbecoming of a company like Apple.

Time to put the pom poms down. ;)

They can't, the captain super glued them to their hands.

[Gugalpm]

That is exactly what I have been thinking.

Me too.

[iAlex]

Not sure what just happened. There I was, sitting at my desk savoring life in 10.5.8 a happy MAC user. I decided to take the plunge and UPGRADE to 10.6 Snow Leopard. I inserted the upgrade disk into my Mac Mini drive. The install GUI came up. Yes, Yes, No, Remind me later, then I pushed ENTER... and THAT's when it happened. THE WHOLE FREAKING THING JUST DISAPPEARED! THE WHOLE THING! GONE! It was right there! Can I reinstall from Time Machine??!!

[ToM7]

dont panic :)

[MorphingDragon]

Not sure what just happened. There I was, sitting at my desk savoring life in 10.5.8 a happy MAC user. I decided to take the plunge and UPGRADE to 10.6 Snow Leopard. I inserted the upgrade disk into my Mac Mini drive. The install GUI came up. Yes, Yes, No, Remind me later, then I pushed ENTER and THAT's when it happened. THE WHOLE FREAKING THING JUST DISAPPEARED! THE WHOLE THING! GONE! It was right there! Can I reinstall from from Time Machine??!!

Check that your reality distortion field is online. :rolleyes:

[Masa Mac]

Call me a troll if you will, but I just experienced this problem two days ago and wasted whole day recovering data from Time Machine backup, reimporting music to iTunes due to broken links, etc.

I've never had any problems with Mac in my 11 years of being a Mac user, but this bug struck me out of nowhere and really shook up my faith in Apple today. I've made a post at discussion forum and send Apple bug complaint about this, but that doesn't recover the time and energy wasted in repairing the damage SL has caused me. Guess I'll hang my tears out to dry. :(

By the way, my Genius friend warned me to avoid using Time Capsule for backups for there's no way to recover data from it when its power system goes out as you could with normal hard disks. Whatever happened to quality control.

[MorphingDragon]

Call me a troll if you will, but I just experienced this problem two days ago and wasted whole day recovering data from Time Machine backup, reimporting music to iTunes due to broken links, etc.

I've never had any problems with Mac in my 11 years of being a Mac user, but this bug struck me out of nowhere and really shook up my faith in Apple today. I've made a post at discussion forum and send Apple bug complaint about this, but that doesn't recover the time and energy wasted in repairing the damage SL has caused me. Guess I'll hang my tears out to dry. :(

By the way, my Genius friend warned me to avoid using Time Capsule for backups for there's no way to recover data from it when its power system goes out as you could with normal hard disks. Whatever happened to quality control.

This is why I dont change until the OS or program has had at least half a years worth of updates, If I have a choice. (Excluding Adobe products and Linux Software)

[*LTD*]

This deletion bug would not exist if Apple wasn't so paranoid and would implement a public beta program.

Worked great for Vista, didn't it?

[Henry Mac]

Worked great for Vista, didn't it?

lol

But seriously, I understand that for the people where it happend it is a pain, but overall SL is a great system not in anyway comparible to vista. And anyway, it can be fixed with a back-up. If you don't have a back-up well you have been asking for it...

[*LTD*]

lol

But seriously, I understand that for the people where it happend it is a pain, but overall SL is a great system not in anyway comparible to vista. And anyway, it can be fixed with a back-up. If you don't have a back-up well you have been asking for it...

Fewer than 100 Snow Leopard users have reported experiencing data loss. During its launch weekend Apple sold 2 million copies of SL. The bug is extremely rare, and it's still undetermined as to whether files are actually erased or just moved.

It's embarrassing for Apple, but even a critical bug on SL seems to be rather elusive and for most users, impossible to replicate. No wonder Apple's been downplaying it. A fix is on the way, anyway.

[MH01]

Fewer than 100 Snow Leopard users have reported experiencing data loss. During its launch weekend Apple sold 2 million copies of SL. The bug is extremely rare, and it's still undetermined as to whether files are actually erased or just moved.

It's embarrassing for Apple, but even a critical bug on SL seems to be rather elusive and for most users, impossible to replicate. No wonder Apple's been downplaying it. A fix is on the way, anyway.

Those stats would be great if it was only 100 users. There is a huge difference between quoting sales numbers and the number of users that ACTUALLY complain about an event.

The site I look after at work has about 1/2 million unique viewers each day, when it went down for 2 hours we had 2 emails of people who actually bothered. I'd have to be a master PR magician to connivence our board that 2 people were effected.

Short story, Stats are BS. From my experience from Apple, if they actually acknowledge an issue.... its big!

[Stiksi]

First the Java crap, then SATA problems, Printer drivers and now to top it off, data loss? Data loss on a Mac? Seriously... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Apple?! :o


People seem to have very short memories on this thread. It's not like 10.5 didn't have its share of earth-moving bugs which included data loss (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/06/leopard_dataloss_bug_uncovered/) and partitioning problems, which also resulted in lost ones and zeros.

They'll sort it out by 10.6.5 probably, which does nothing to justify Apple's stunning incompetence in both instances. Still, I'm not prepared to call "Vista" on SL just yet.

[Gugalpm]

Not sure what just happened. There I was, sitting at my desk savoring life in 10.5.8 a happy MAC user. I decided to take the plunge and UPGRADE to 10.6 Snow Leopard. I inserted the upgrade disk into my Mac Mini drive. The install GUI came up. Yes, Yes, No, Remind me later, then I pushed ENTER... and THAT's when it happened. THE WHOLE FREAKING THING JUST DISAPPEARED! THE WHOLE THING! GONE! It was right there! Can I reinstall from Time Machine??!!

:eek:

Hahahaha!

[Giocanni]

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/9953/leobug.png

[*LTD*]

Its too bad that SL is turning out to be the new Vista...

There's absolutely no evidence to support that.

Until there's mass public outcry, like with Vista, and/or a mass push to downgrade to an earlier version of the OS, that contention is nothing more than smoke and FUD that lives and dies in the Apple fansite bubble (perptuated mostly by Windows sufferers camping Apple fansites.)