Home folder has gone along with all my files

[Cardfree]

I have done something which has caused me to lose my home folder and everything with it. I do not know how and have tried loads of things found in forum discussions to fix it but nothing works.

I inherited my MacBook from my sister and I have no 10.4 disk to help. There is no Time Machine on it but I have got FireVault activated, not that I really understand what it does.

I tried to upgrade from 10.4 to 10.6 but it told me I needed to partition my drive so I wanted to do a back up first. I reformatted a HP Personal Media external drive using Disk Utilities and tried to copy my Macintosh HD onto it. I got a message box telling me it was going to take 8 hours so I left it over night. When I checked on it the message now told me I did not have certain privileges so I cancelled. I shut the computer down thinking I would come back to it later to try again. When I logged in to my user I got a new message 'the home folder for user is not located in the usual place or cannot be accessed...' the desktop reverts back to a new user with no icons but the HD drive.

I tried to find my user by going to Users/my user but I get a message 'the alias 'me' could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found.' I get the options 'delete alias' 'fix alias' 'OK'. Fix alias asks me to choose item I want the alias to open but nothing works and ok does nothing and I have not clicked delete.

I have tried searching for my user, folders and files using spotlight but there is nothing.

I have been to disk utility and repaired disk permissions and get the message 'The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume' but nothing changes. I've tried a few commands, again I don't fully understand it all, and nothing.

I have created a new user as an admin ad tried logging in and finding them that way, still nothing.

I have lost my music, my portfolio, my documents and worst of all my photos. I have no back up and no OS X disk to load from. I have an appointment at an Apple store at the weekend but am hoping someone here can tell me what is going on.

 

[Tyr.]

I have done something which has caused me to lose my home folder and everything with it. I do not know how and have tried loads of things found in forum discussions to fix it but nothing works.

I inherited my MacBook from my sister and I have no 10.4 disk to help. There is no Time Machine on it but I have got FireVault activated, not that I really understand what it does.

I tried to upgrade from 10.4 to 10.6 but it told me I needed to partition my drive so I wanted to do a back up first. I reformatted a HP Personal Media external drive using Disk Utilities and tried to copy my Macintosh HD onto it. I got a message box telling me it was going to take 8 hours so I left it over night. When I checked on it the message now told me I did not have certain privileges so I cancelled. I shut the computer down thinking I would come back to it later to try again. When I logged in to my user I got a new message 'the home folder for user is not located in the usual place or cannot be accessed...' the desktop reverts back to a new user with no icons but the HD drive.

I tried to find my user by going to Users/my user but I get a message 'the alias 'me' could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found.' I get the options 'delete alias' 'fix alias' 'OK'. Fix alias asks me to choose item I want the alias to open but nothing works and ok does nothing and I have not clicked delete.

I have tried searching for my user, folders and files using spotlight but there is nothing.

I have been to disk utility and repaired disk permissions and get the message 'The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume' but nothing changes. I've tried a few commands, again I don't fully understand it all, and nothing.

I have created a new user as an admin ad tried logging in and finding them that way, still nothing.

I have lost my music, my portfolio, my documents and worst of all my photos. I have no back up and no OS X disk to load from. I have an appointment at an Apple store at the weekend but am hoping someone here can tell me what is going on.

Filevault is the complicating factor here. What it does is basically store your entire home folder into 1 encrypted disk image. This should be located somewhere like : /Users/Yourlogin/Yourlogin.sparseimage

You won't be able to find your files with any other user as this image is only mounted when the user logs in. See if you can locate this file, it may have been damaged.

Also, try to change as little as possible on the laptop. If you're taking it in to an expert all you can do is potentially make it worse unless you know what you are doing.