ICal Calendars have disappeared

Question

I opened iCal today to find that all of the information was gone. I looked in Users/~/Library/Calendars and was shocked to see it empty. After some investigation, I figured out that iCal seems to be saving calendars in a new place: Users/~/Library/Application Support/iCal.
So my best guess is that when I downloaded an iCal update, it changed the save directory, deleted the old calendars, but didn't successfully bring them to the new spot. I'd really appreciate any thoughts or comments.
I highly doubt if I can still resurrect them at this point, but I'd like to at least understand what happened and warn people to back up their calendars.

Answer 1

I run this with cron every night. The crontab entry is
1 1 * * * /users/austin/Library/Scripts/CalBack
but you could equally well have iCal run it from a recurring alarmed event - if you weren't worried about iCal loosing its files! The script keeps backups up to MaxBackups days old - adjust the value to suit. If you happen not to notice a problem the first day or two, you restore an older backup!
AK
click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">set MaxBackups to 5
--pick up directory path
set WhoAmI to ((parentOf (path to desktop)) as string) & "Library"
set iCalPlace to WhoAmI & ":Application Support:iCal"
tell application "Finder"
--make our backup folder if necessary
if not (exists folder (WhoAmI & ":CalBackup")) then
make new folder with properties {name:"CalBackup"} at folder WhoAmI
end if
--Loose folder at limit
if exists folder (WhoAmI & ":CalBackup:" & (MaxBackups as string)) then
delete folder (WhoAmI & ":CalBackup:" & (MaxBackups as string))
end if
--Roll on backup folders
set TheCount to count of folder (WhoAmI & ":CalBackup:")
repeat with TheCount from TheCount to 1 by -1
set name of folder (WhoAmI & ":CalBackup:" & TheCount as string) to (TheCount + 1) as string
end repeat
--make new backup folder 1
make new folder with properties {name:"1"} at folder (WhoAmI & ":CalBackup")
duplicate every item of folder (iCalPlace) to folder (WhoAmI & ":CalBackup:1")
end tell
</pre>