Startup drive error

[andrew610]

hi,

I set up an imac with an external backup drive and used a script to have superduper back it up each night. however, the script set it as the startup disk (my error - i'd confused bootable with startup).

Over the last few months it has been running in this way, undetected.

Anyway, once i discovered my mistake i ejected it, feeling sure that I could untangle the mess by transfering the data back to the internal hard drive. Not true!

I can't find any of my files on either drive for the last 3 months (ie since the start of this mess up)

i've tried to set it as the startup drive again in an effort to recover my data. No luck.

I've used Easyfind to look real deep into both drives. No luck.

can anyone suggest a way to retrieve my data?

big thank you in advance

[dnanian]

Well, it's unclear what drive you were running from. If you were able to eject the drive at all, then you were running from some other drive. And if you were running on a schedule, and had a backup set to run from the internal to the external, it would fail if you were running from the external.

Given that, the only 'automatic' way the copy could have run would be from the internal to the external (at least unless you changed things)... and since you didn't indicate you received any errors, that would mean you weren't running from the external.

Did you try to 'fix' this yourself by restoring from the external?

[andrew610]

hi Dave,
thx for reply. i see your logic.
could you expand on what you mean by "Did you try to "fix" this yourself by restoring from the external?"

do you mean starting up from it? or ...

thx

andrew slots http://hicallyslot.org/

[dnanian]

I mean did you ever try restoring by copying back, without checking all the files? I just can't see how the files could be gone unless you started up from the other drive and copied over them...