<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">So .... "don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone ...."<div><br></div><div>My apologies to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_of_the_Canyon">Joni Mitchell and other Ladies of the Canyon for recycling the lyrics</a> .</div><div><br></div><div>===========</div><div><br></div><div>The folks I saw Thursday and today have accidentally erased all their data while install 10.6. Several years of photos and music and email and "who knows what else .." as I was not able to retrieve anything.</div><div><br></div><div>In the state of panic on Wednesday morning, they dug up their Leopard 10.5.1 CD to do a "complete install" over a failed 10.6 installation.</div><div><br></div><div>I was not their on Wednesday to witness how it was done .... but listening to the story it seems that the Snow Leopard installer failed once, failed a 2nd time and then they went back into old boxes to find 10.5 installer DVDs to "go back to the way it was ..."</div><div><br></div><div>I'm going to spare you the rest of the story ... but I can tell you that loss of precious personal data, or financial data or even your favorite songs that you have purchased on CDs or over iTunes can really be heartbreaking.</div><div><br></div><div>Disk Warrior saw no data I could recover. And since new 10.5.1 data was written over the failed 10.6 install, the likelihood of getting Drive Savers to get anything back was slim and very expensive.</div><div><br></div><div>Moving forward :</div><div><br></div><div>1. We installed 10.6 over the newly created 10.5.1 and began anew !</div><div><br></div><div>2. A blessing was cast upon us when they remembered that they had photos and music on an iPod Touch !!!!! We got 2375 songs back back with Senuti ( $18 utility ) . That was a great moment amidst all other bad news. Photos did not transfer over ... the Apple Store will look into this with them.</div><div><br></div><div>3. Time Machine 1TB drive was installed !</div><div><br></div><div>4. Office 2008 was installed and updated to 12.2.1</div><div><br></div><div>5. iLife '09 was installed an fully patched.</div><div><br></div><div>6. Grief counseling and pep talk.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>btw ... we installed the 10.6 compatible Epson R320 drivers from epson.com .... they don't work ! </div><div><br></div><div>Researching the cause this weekend.</div><div><br></div><div>I hope this story helps to educate and warn people ....</div><div><br></div><div>Dave</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></body></html>