HELP!!! I am trying to update OS to tiger and screwed up!!!

Question

I blew it and think I lost all data. I went to upgrade from 10.3.9 to 10.4 and 'missed' the option of 'archive and install'. Now I can't boot from hard drive with OS X. I do have 2 hard drives one still is 9.2. My g-4 will boot from that drive but when I did - I looked in the OS X hard drive and it showed my library empty. I am sick. Can my accounting and iPhoto library be restored??? As I don't see my accounting QuickBooks Pro, Quicken 2006 and other applications... I have been a Mac user for over 15 years abd have never had any problems and NO, I did not back up - that is why I am so sick to my stomach. STUPID ME!!! Can someone help me???????
If you are curious - I am using Powerbook right now.

Answer 1

Hi ScubaBum;
May I welcome you to the Apple Discussion Forums.
First of all; stop using the computer! That is most critical if you want to have even a prayer of saving any of your data.
Next you will need another empty disk preferably Firewire to store whatever data can be salvaged on to.
The download preferably on another Mac this Data Rescue.
Connect the other Mac to your Mac using Target Disk Mode. The demo version of Data Rescue will tell you what it going to be able to salvage for you. If it appears that if can find enough for it be worth it to you then you will need to pay for it so that it will recover the files for you.
Once you are have recovered as much as you can then you can use the new disk to implement a good backup solution to prevent this in the future.
Allan