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Overwrite? Append folder?

SDAVE

SDAVE

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 16, 2007
3,620
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So I was sleep deprived (school work) and I copied a folder from an external drive to the internal one and I forgot what OS X asked me.

Now when I check the folder that I dropped my folder into (they have the same names...external drive folder is older) it overwrote the whole folder and deleted the newer files in the destination folder?

I must be doozy right now or something is going on.

Does OS X actually never append files? Even if I overwrite a folder??

Anyway to recover these files?

It's about 30 hours of work :(

I haven't written anything back to the drive yet so...

thank you
 
OSX never merges folders. It asks you "Do you want to overwrite the folder". If you say yes that's what it does.

You should recover from the backups you are keeping of your important work.
 
I've been using Macs for years and this is the first time I've run into this.

Is there a good application to recover the files?

Worst case scenario is that I'll spend another 30 hours on this stuff :(
 
Gregg2 said:
No. You over-wrote them. They do not exist any more, except on your backup.
Click to expand...

Most likely not. That's not how the file system actually works. In general FileSalvage might work. The most important thing to do is to stop using the computer entirely until you can use the file recovery tool.
 
x2 on what Robbie said.

OP, I did (a few weeks ago) exactly what you did. FileSalvage was able to retrieve all of the lost files. It's crucial you stop using the drive on which the files were deleted. Otherwise when new files are created, there's a good chance they will overwrite the content of your deleted files.
 
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