Let’s start at the beginning- I have two external hard drives.

One is 320 GB (and black), made by a company called SimpleTech. I bought it about 3 years ago, when I didn’t know much about the specifications that make external drives unique. It connects via USB only, but I otherwise haven’t had any real issues with it. It’s nickname is “Angie“.

My other external HD is 750 GB (and silver), made by the lovely Western Digital. My boyfriend bought this for me a little over a year ago, when I’d accidentally deleted all the contents on my server (which I’d been using as an “online external drive”). It has a couple firewire inputs, as well as USB and eSATA. Needless to say it’s much more valuable to me. I nicknamed it “Paige“.

Last night I decided to combine all the files from Angie to Paige, and then to move all the movies and videos that had accumulated on Paige onto Angie. This way I’d have all my important backup information on one, and a place to keep all my videos on another. I had it all planned out, including keeping all the other applications on my computer closed, in hopes that the process would go by faster… and then the trouble began. First I used AppZapper on Angie to remove all the applications and settings, then simply transferred the important files over to Paige. Once that was done, I relocated all my videos from the Western Digital drive to the SimpleTech drive (see how I followed the plan?).

I was feeling pretty good right about then, seeing as I accomplished all this in just a couple hours. Then, as I began to reopen all my usual applications (Firefox, Adium, etc.) I realized that all my visual themes, preferences/ settings, bookmarks, and content were completely gone. When I had initially closed Firefox, I had about 10 tabs open (all content I wanted to access this weekend) and now there was nothing. No tabs, no history, no bookmarks, nothing. I began to open other apps to see how much damage was done and ‘lo and behold’, the same was gone from Safari, Transmit, all of my Adobe suite, and more.

I went on a Googling frenzy, looking through forums, and on Twitter for information as to how to get it all back… but the only responses were “sorry you’re out of luck” or “try an un-delete program”. I tried not one or two, but three different un-delete applications, but none of them helped me retrieve what I needed. I still don’t know what happened to my files, considering I never even attempted to access the contents of my internal hard drive, but what I do know is that I’m feeling pretty shitty. I was able to obtain bits and pieces of preferences from my last backup to Paige, but nothing close to what I’d like. If anyone has any information regarding how you think I might’ve made this mess (or how to fix it!), please let me know.