Very nervous... New RAM = folders disappearing!

[eyeon]

Oh man, I am terribly nervous right now.

So, a while back, I got some RAM from Crucial for my new G5, and at the time didn't realize that the RAM sticks needed to be paired. So I installed what I could, and just held on to the one remaining RAM stick knowing that someday I would be able to afford one more stick to pair up with it. So, I asked for it for Christmas, got it, and opened it up... I installed the two sticks, booted up my G5, and checked "about this MAC", and the new RAM didn't show up. Frustrated, I unplugged everything and pulled out the new RAM sticks and noticed that even though they both say PC3200, 512MB, DDR, 400, CL3, they look significantly different. One has a row of chips on BOTH sides of the stick, while the other only has chips on one side...

Anyway, I booted up my G5 yet again, and started dinking around again, and eventually noticed that a folder was sort of "missing"... This folder is probably the most important folder on my entire hard drive, as it is the folder in which I put all my design work for a company I have started working for about 4 months ago... the folder has a lot of important things in it; a website (that has not yet been uploaded to the net), all of my graphic design jobs, brochures, posters, logos, etc... This would be devistating to lose this folder, in other words.

So, the wierd part is, whenever I reboot, the folder shows up, but without a little arrow next to it, and when I click on it, the folder disappears. It stays gone until I reboot the OS again, and then the same thing...

I pray that someone has at least a suggestion or some kind of insight to this problem... Thank you in advance.

 

[glosterseagul]

Edit: I thought Rebuild desktop...but it seems only in os9.

I can't see how to "rebuild the desktop" - but I dont think the folder is lost. My OS x knowledge is very limited - Now os 9 ...

 

[CanadaRAM]

Don't do any more work on the machine until you have recovered and backed up your data - the more reading and writing you do on the machine the lower your chances are.

Presumably 4 months of work is worth something. You may want to buy an external Firewire hard drive right now, before doing anything else, and use that to back up the rest of your data, and as a place to recover the files to. Once this "incident" is out of the way, you can continue to use the Firewire drive as a backup for all of your work.


First, open Disk Utility and run a Verify/Repair on your hard drive. I'm not at my OSX machine- I can't remember if you have to be booted from the drive or booted from the OSX CD to do this.

Reboot and repair Permissions with Disk Utility

If the folder still doesn't show up, see if you can boot from a DiskWarrior version 3.x CD and run DiskWarrior against the hard drive (buy DiskWarrior latest version or take it to a shop that has DW.)

If it still doesn't show up, buy DataRescue X (or take to the shop) and try to recover the data with that. Make sure you have a place other than the internal hard drive to save the recovered files to.

If all else fails, you can send the drive to a recovery specialist like Total Recall or ActionFront, but be aware that this can cost $1000 - $4000.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com