Genius Bar lost a business file. Can't seem to find it in Time Machine...Got Ideas?

Question

Genius Bar lost a business financial file. Can't seem to find it in Time Machine. Gone back several days...Got Ideas?

Answer 1

You need to give me more info..
What did you take the Mac to the genius for??
What did they do to it?
Did you have TM setup at defaults doing backups hourly?
Are you using a Time Capsule? Did you ever backup the time capsule??
Please do a backup of your Time Machine backup right now.. in TC plug in a suitable sized USB drive and do an archive.. you can do nothing else while this is happening but it is crucial for you to have another copy of whatever you have.
Archive is a bit slow.. and the backup is slightly less useful.
The fastest method is plug the USB into your computer and copy and paste  the backups.backupdb directly to the USB drive. It should copy at around 60GB/hr so calculate how long that will take. See instructions here. http://pondini.org/TM/18.html Assuming you are using a TC then you use method 4.. copying from a Network backup to local drive.
Never work directly from the original backup .. work just from this copy so anything you do can be reversed or recovered.
Read very carefully the methods of restoring files from TM.. it is a bit out of date but Pondini has the best details.
So Q14-17 here. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
You can do a full recovery of the backup to a USB drive.. and then search for your file in more normal way.
Get professional help.. and this is where you need data recovery people who are familiar with apple TM backup format. Check local apple store or perhaps better local Apple independent repair business that are used to handling this kind of event.
Also talk to the company that makes the software as they must have to deal with people who manage to lose, corrupt or in some other way ruin their data and need to recover.. see what hints they can give you.
Surely at some point you pass your info to your accountant in the form of a computer backup file from your accounting package.
I have to admit I am surprised if you never backed up your business data file to a USB stick and put it in a filing cabinet at home or a hard disk at a friends place.. Cloud storage for your business files.. Did you depend totally on TM for backups? You never planned for a fire or theft of your computer and TC?? Or what has happened.. loss of computer files and failure of the backup? No greater teacher than the burnt hand that touching hot stuff isn't a good idea. Sorry .. it is a very hard lesson.. but electronic data storage on magnetic media is ever one byte away from being gone forever.. !!