Where are the contents of Dashboard stickies stored?

[Kingsly]

My drive went down a while ago, but thankfully I was able to recover my entire home folder. Only problem is, I can't seem to restore the contents of my stickies in Dashboard. I have my library backed up.
Help?

 

[Mal]

~/Library/Preferences/widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist

There's a string in there labeled with a long string of numbers and letters with -data on the end, and the contents of that string are your notes. Of course, you can also simply copy that file over and it should restore the sticky, but no guarantees.

jW

 

[Kingsly]

Bugger. It isn't there.

Well, at least it's further proof that I'm not loosing my mind.

 

[Vortexboy]

~/Library/Preferences/widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist

There's a string in there labeled with a long string of numbers and letters with -data on the end, and the contents of that string are your notes. Of course, you can also simply copy that file over and it should restore the sticky, but no guarantees.

jW

I'm sorry, I can't follow what to do with the location of the stickies file.

A little while ago, I lost a bunch of things on my computer, and all my sticky notes were part of that loss.

I don't know the process for getting them back.
I don't have the file you say I ought to, although I can see other things that may be the right file/location etc.

~/Library/Preferences/
After the above folder, I don't have anything starting with "widget".
Does this mean I am kaput?

I also lost all my email folders and all my many years of painstakingly gathered bookmarks in Firefox.

I think this was self-inflicted, but I was unaware that I would suffer a loss of anything when I did what I did, which was to activate FileVault and then, for some strange-Twilight Zone-esque reason, I renamed my home folder because I thought it should read something else other than "Home".

I have now learned the lesson of backing up, but of course, only after suffering a loss.

Can you help me with these perhaps?

My system is 10.4.11

 

[Mal]

I renamed my home folder because I thought it should read something else other than "Home".

This was your critical mistake. Not FileVault, although it certainly can have issues. Never, ever, rename your home folder, at least not without looking up the (complex) correct procedure for doing so. Fortunately, on 10.5 and up, Apple's made it impossible to do so without enabling the root account (which would usually indicate you know how to do it correctly, though it's still not impossible).

As far as your situation is concerned, no, there's nothing I can do to help you. Since you don't have a backup to restore, no one can get those back for you. Sorry!

jW

 

[Vortexboy]

This was your critical mistake. Not FileVault, although it certainly can have issues. Never, ever, rename your home folder, at least not without looking up the (complex) correct procedure for doing so. Fortunately, on 10.5 and up, Apple's made it impossible to do so without enabling the root account (which would usually indicate you know how to do it correctly, though it's still not impossible).

As far as your situation is concerned, no, there's nothing I can do to help you. Since you don't have a backup to restore, no one can get those back for you. Sorry!

jW

On advice from an Apple store, I backed up everything to an external drive and then I turned off Filevault.

I just don't know what to do next. The person at the Apple store told me to use a data recovery service, but the cost of this is prohibitive.
I have purchased the software called Data Rescue.

I am sure the data/files are still there, as I haven't deleted anything.