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Upgrading to larger SSD, where are my files?

G

Greengecko19

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2018
12
5
I'm upgrading from a 240GB SSD to a 2TB SSD. When I put the old SSD in a dock to clone it, I don't see the folders that I thought should be there -- primarily the 5 user profiles that are supposed to be there. I only see the "Shared" folder under Users, and the drive data is miniscule, showing only 10GB of data when I "Get Info" on the drive. There are thousands of pictures, so I know there has to be more than that.

Is the rest of my data still there, perhaps concealed?
 
Good question -- I forgot to include that important info. I'm actually taking the 240GB SSD from a 2009 27" iMac and cloning that drive to a 2TB SSD to install it in a 2011 iMac. I was told in the different thread there were no fusion drives for the 2009 iMacs. I'm using the 2011 iMac to connect the dual dock that I'll be using to clone the drives. When I place the SSD from the 2009 iMac into the dock, I see only the 10GB of data/folders.

The logic board in the 2009 iMac burned out, so I have no way of looking at the files in their original condition. There is a 1TB HDD in the 2009 iMac and I'm pretty sure it was configured simply as a second drive because I remember seeing it as a separate drive in Finder. The contents of the HDD appear empty, but I thought I remembered setting it up as the storage location for files, I'm just not sure now.
 
Last edited:
Mount the SSD in the finder and take a screenshot.
Post it here.
Show us what you are seeing (or are NOT seeing).
 
Greengecko19 said:
Is the rest of my data still there, perhaps concealed?
Click to expand...

It's possible. I just went through the migration from hell and I suspect that Mojave enacted some new security measures that didn't affect previous migrations that I had done. The user account on the new Mac wasn't the same as the user account on the old Mac so it discarded most of my files during the migration. Entire directories were missing. Upon inspecting the source drive, I found that I couldn't browse any of the directories that contained my missing files.

I had to wipe my new machine and let migration assistant recreate the user so the old user and the new user would be viewed as the same account. Then my files were accepted on the new machine.
 
smirking said:
It's possible. I just went through the migration from hell and I suspect that Mojave enacted some new security measures that didn't affect previous migrations that I had done. The user account on the new Mac wasn't the same as the user account on the old Mac so it discarded most of my files during the migration. Entire directories were missing. Upon inspecting the source drive, I found that I couldn't browse any of the directories that contained my missing files.

I had to wipe my new machine and let migration assistant recreate the user so the old user and the new user would be viewed as the same account. Then my files were accepted on the new machine.
Click to expand...


Though I can't confirm this is expected behavior, I can confirm that yes, there are new security measures when using Migration Assistant in 10.14. I have see the requirement to reset account passwords, as well as being forced to promote at least one account to an admin (even though there was already an existing admin account on the 10.14 box).
[doublepost=1555097293][/doublepost]OP: what tool are you using to clone?
 
Fishrrman said:
Mount the SSD in the finder and take a screenshot.
Post it here.
Show us what you are seeing (or are NOT seeing).
Click to expand...

OK, I finally got around to taking a screenshot of the Finder for both drives
Screen Shot 2019-04-19 at 7.34.56 PM.jpg
Screen Shot 2019-04-19 at 7.50.59 PM.png
 
You're supposed to see the users when you view the Users directory. You may not be able to access all of the files in those user directories, but you're supposed to at least see that the user directories exist. Is that original drive damaged? Have you run First Aid on it?
 
OP

If you log out of your current account, do you then see the login display with all the users "still there"?

Can you then log into (and log out of) each of the different user accounts?

If you can do this, the user folders must be "somewhere" -- were they moved at some point?

Looking at the first pic you posted above, I see the drive "mac".
What happens if you click on THAT drive?
Does it have a users folder?
 
I removed the standard HDD from the 2011, which I had configured for four family users. When I looked at that drive, I can see our profile folders under the "Users" folder, so that tells me I should be seeing the same thing on the SSD from the 2009 machine, but they are not there. So I got a trial version of EaseUS to recover data and our user folders are all there, deleted. I don't understand how that happened because I took the 2009 iMac to an Apple Store and they told me that the logic board was bad. So if they couldn't even turn the machine on, I don't understand how they managed to delete all the user profiles. The only folder that remained was "Shared". I'll just have to chalk this one up as a mystery and shrug it off.

Does anyone have any suggestions for data recovery software that may be better than EaseUS?
Thanks to everyone for trying to help out.
 
Well, that's the issue -- I have the 240GB SSD from the old 2009 machine that I took to the Apple Store but the user folders aren't there. Only the "Shared" folder is present. I mention the 2011 HDD folders, because those I had to create recently when I bought the "new" machine, and when I took that HDD out to replace it with a 2TB SSD, all the user folders were present and easy to find on the HDD. Somehow they just got wiped out on the old 240GB SSD. So I can see them with EaseUS, but I'm wondering if there's a better tool out there for Mac.
 
OP:

My guess is that SOMETHING was done to the SSD that deleted the user folders you need. It may have been intentional, or not intentional, but -- it happened.

You can try to recover them, but I think it will be much easier, faster and cheaper to just go to the "old drive" that STILL HAS THE USER FOLDERS on it.

Take the folders from that drive.
It might be possible to migrate them using migration assistant, but that will involve some tricks and planning.
Or... you can "manually migrate" the data in them, but again you have to know what you're doing.

In any case, just "use what you have".

"A bird in the hand..."
 
If you still have data (user accounts) on any drive, that would likely be the fastest way to go: move them to the new drive.

If Migration Assistant will do the job, that is easiest.

Be sure to delete existing accounts...as it is simplest if the accounts DO NOT exist (duplicates are not possible).

As you likely aware by this point, the user account is really just a database entry, while the user home directory is folder; you can delete the user account and keep the home directory, or vice versa.

If you have the move the user folders manually (no Migration Assistant), you will likely have to change the permissions of the folder(s) to move them. Once moved, there is a fairly easy method to correct the permissions...by simply making the account AFTER the move, and being sure you name the home directory and account exactly the same. More on that if needed later.
 
I agree -- something did happen, but it's a mystery. I'm thinking now that I might have blown everything away myself when I was trying to reboot the machine 20 different ways when the logic board started failing, before I had it diagnosed at the Apple Store. Unfortunately, there's no accessible user data on that original 240GB SSD drive. I can only see the deleted user folders when I scan the drive with EaseUS. I mentioned the user folders on the HDD from the "new" 2011 machine, because that just gave me confirmation that when you take out the drive from the machine and put it in a docking station on another machine, the individual user folders are visible in Finder when you open the "Users" folder.
 
OK....so if you only see them via recovery tools:

Don't use the drive for ANYTHING else. Every use potentially writes over the data you want to recover!

That is assuming stuff got deleted.

The other option is that the directory is whacked. If so, a utility like Disk Warrior would likely solve it. But if you can get what you need with recovery...might be fastest and cheapest path.

Either way, the safe thing to do is assume the drive itself or the directory is very fragile; get what you can off it ASAP.
 
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