I scheduled a Deja Vu backup of my HD (30gb full) into a folder on my 500gb firewire drive (200gb full) and the backup executed last night. The folder I backed up into was called backup but it contained other folders containing installation files for every bit of software on my mac. deja vu seems to have deleted all the folders contained within the backup folder before backing up my disk. I really need these folder back! The strange thing is that my FW disk is now full at 500gb!? It should be about 230gb. I dont know what is taking up the extra space suddenly. I'm presuming the install folders are still there somewhere within the extra 270gb. i've used terminal to show hidden files but cant see anything obvious. does anyone know how i can either roll back the data changes on the fw drive or is there something that will allow me to see EVERYTHING on the drive. if anyone can help me retrieve the files i would be really greatful. they must be there somewhere within that 500gb. thanks guys, dren
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backup has overwritten files!
- Thread starter drennan
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I'm not familiar with Deja Vu but is your backup a .dmg file? If so that's probably taking all the space. Try going to terminal and typing:
hdiutil compress /Volumes/whatever/backup.dmg
Of course replace the italicized portion with the location of the dmg. This will free up your external hard drive.
If it was the dmg file that used up all your space, odds are all the bits are written over and the other data is gone. You can try to use "WhatSize" to see if there is a large file on the drive. There is also some software that might be able to recover the data but from what I recall it's expensive and kinda iffy if it can recover the data or not. I would turn off your external hard drive immediately until you figure out what solution you want to try.
hdiutil compress /Volumes/whatever/backup.dmg
Of course replace the italicized portion with the location of the dmg. This will free up your external hard drive.
If it was the dmg file that used up all your space, odds are all the bits are written over and the other data is gone. You can try to use "WhatSize" to see if there is a large file on the drive. There is also some software that might be able to recover the data but from what I recall it's expensive and kinda iffy if it can recover the data or not. I would turn off your external hard drive immediately until you figure out what solution you want to try.
no its not a dmg, i just told it to copy 'disk' incase i needed to retrieve any apps or data if i corrupted something. I cant see the folders anywhere with hidden files showing but the drive is still at max capacity so i dont know where the extra data has come from. the drive will not eject it says it is in use. even after a reboot so maybe the os thinks an operation (transfer/backup?) hasn't completed and locks onto the drive as it mounts. can i kill this process so it doesn't execute when i restart? maybe that would remove any temp files and free up the approx 250gb that should be free. with regards to the missing folders, does anyone know if i can revert the drive to a previous state or reverse the backup or something? thanks again, dren