Hey everyone,
I am desperately seeking help. I am at work and just recently got a new iMac because my last one was acting up a lot. I work as a graphic designer and resolved to keep all my files on an external harddrive going forward, in order not to bog down my computer. It's only been a few weeks now since the switch.
Yesterday, I exported a .jpg from Illustrator to present at a meeting and every time I tried to attach it to an e-mail, or even just highlight it in Finder, it would crash my computer. So today I decided I wanted it gone. Since I can't highlight it to delete it to the Trashcan, I needed to get creative.
I asked an IT friend if he knew at all, and he suggested I type this command into Terminal: rm -r /Volumes/ DSatterfield$/promos/lir/Canadian Social Security iHTML/subheads.jpg
Subheads.jpg is the file in question. I'm not experienced with Terminal and had no idea how powerful it really is. Suffice to say, it deleted my entire external harddrive. Didn't even ask me to confirm or anything, it's just gone. I didn't know at the time (which I do now, thanks to panic research) that the -r is recursive and will delete everything along that path.
So where I'm at now is I'm missing 2.5 years of work. Everything I've done since my first day on the job is gone. All the assets my company relies on for promotional material is poofed. Obviously, we should have backed up. We don't have a protocol for that here, and I'm not tech-savvy enough to have set up a system for it. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Here's what I need:
Is there a way to recover this data AT ALL? From what I can find online, it seems I have a SLIM chance if I send it off to data recovery specialists. My job, and thus my life, are now in jeopardy because of an innocent mistake and I am frantic to find an answer. I have passed the external harddrive in question off to my IT department, but they don't seem very optimistic.
There MUST be a way to get that stuff back. I need some hope here I have 2.5 years of work riding on this and I am desperate to find a solution. I can throw money at it if it will help.
Please, anyone.
I am desperately seeking help. I am at work and just recently got a new iMac because my last one was acting up a lot. I work as a graphic designer and resolved to keep all my files on an external harddrive going forward, in order not to bog down my computer. It's only been a few weeks now since the switch.
Yesterday, I exported a .jpg from Illustrator to present at a meeting and every time I tried to attach it to an e-mail, or even just highlight it in Finder, it would crash my computer. So today I decided I wanted it gone. Since I can't highlight it to delete it to the Trashcan, I needed to get creative.
I asked an IT friend if he knew at all, and he suggested I type this command into Terminal: rm -r /Volumes/ DSatterfield$/promos/lir/Canadian Social Security iHTML/subheads.jpg
Subheads.jpg is the file in question. I'm not experienced with Terminal and had no idea how powerful it really is. Suffice to say, it deleted my entire external harddrive. Didn't even ask me to confirm or anything, it's just gone. I didn't know at the time (which I do now, thanks to panic research) that the -r is recursive and will delete everything along that path.
So where I'm at now is I'm missing 2.5 years of work. Everything I've done since my first day on the job is gone. All the assets my company relies on for promotional material is poofed. Obviously, we should have backed up. We don't have a protocol for that here, and I'm not tech-savvy enough to have set up a system for it. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Here's what I need:
Is there a way to recover this data AT ALL? From what I can find online, it seems I have a SLIM chance if I send it off to data recovery specialists. My job, and thus my life, are now in jeopardy because of an innocent mistake and I am frantic to find an answer. I have passed the external harddrive in question off to my IT department, but they don't seem very optimistic.
There MUST be a way to get that stuff back. I need some hope here I have 2.5 years of work riding on this and I am desperate to find a solution. I can throw money at it if it will help.
Please, anyone.