Lost all iPhone files after iMac restore

Hi there,
A family member when trying to back their iPhone onto our old iMac, used the iTunes 'Restore' function which wiped the iPhone.
I assume the files should be somewhere on the iMac. It is an old G5 running OS/X 10.5.8. The iPhone is a 4S running IOS 6.
Any ideas if the photos, music and apps files can be found?
Many thanks,

Thanks, this is what we now understand. The issue seems to be some form of idiosynchrocy in the older Apple operating system. Later uses of the same function provided a 'Backup First' option. So it goes...

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can anyone help with retrieving My Library in Itunes and Itunes store - having updated Itunes and Icloud on 24 September 13, my computer failed and I lost all my files which were eventually backed up to an Emergency Backup. my computer is now working again and I have down loaded Itunes and transferred all the files from my Emergency Backup. Non of the music went back into Itunes, so I had to find these files and manually moved them to Itunes. The music is now in Itunes, but I no longer have the folder named My Library, which I think is the reason my Ipad, ipod no longer sync any additional music I have added to Itunes. Does anyone know how to rectify this please.
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iTunes expects files and folders to be in very specific locations. When you start iTunes it looks for a file called library.itl which is in the iTunes folder. It then uses all the references in that file which tell it where all your media files are located to build up the view you normally see. Probably you moved the library file so iTunes cannot find it and it will make a default one which is empty. When you plug in your iPod it isn't recognizing the library since it is not the same one to which you synced last.
Simply put, you need to undo all your file moves. Not as eaily done as stated but since I cannot quite see from here exactly what you spent an hour doing last night it will be up to you. Did you make a backup before doing all this?
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/message/13025536 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/17457605

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Hey all,
im completly new to all things Mac, everything has been great so far but now i seem to have lost everything.
I turned on Filevault protection then shutdown my Macbook, came back to it a couple of hours later and now all of my files, itunes music files have gone, all of the settings and preferences seem to be back to the factory settings, and well everything has dissapeared?!! any help would be greatly appreciated.
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I have no idea how Apple would handle this. I would hope they would tell you to go into an Apple store and have someone there look at it and fix it. That would be very good advice. Trying to fix a problem like this over the phone would be really hard.
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In the terminal, you can type "open /Users/.stuartcampbell/stuartcampbell.sparseimage" to mount that disk image as a new volume. Hopefully, you can log in as "stuart campbell" and do this. That would be really good. If you can, log in as "stuart campbell", open that disk image, and copy all the files you find into a new folder named "saved files" under the "/Users/Shared" folder. You want to get your files out of that sparseimage and into the real file system.
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I realize this is very complicated and more than you really want to do. I don't see any way around it. It is very difficult to know exactly what state your system is in and exactly what is going to work and what won't. A trip to the Apple Store or a similar place might be a good idea. I say might because there is no guarantee they can fix it either. There are still way too many steps that say "If this works" and "try this".
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Lost all iPhone files after iMac restore

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