"private" folder has appeared after restore to internal HDD

Dear Forum,
I was using a FW400 drive as a boot drive (the original internal HDD was too small and slow), but that got filled up pretty quickly so I took a deep breath and changed out the HDD from my MacBook Pro. I followed the Restore procedure for Time Machine and after a few hours I got my Mac back. The only thing is I now have a private folder visible when I double click the internal HDD icon (excuse me if that is not too clear, where the Applications, Desktop, Library, System, Users folders reside there is now a folder called private (Get Info Size 4.08GB.) I swear this has just appeared. Is this folder usually in this place and I have simply not noticed? I must admit it has got me second guessing myself.
Another strange occurrence, but in the same place a is blank icon entitled Envelope Index. I have made a copy and opened it and found this and only this line: SQLite format 3@. What on earth is it and do I need it?
Cheers.

Larry Cohen1 wrote:
Thanks very much for the kind words.
We have several Macs here, all running the latest Leopard, well cared for with the latest software. We backup our machines eery day with TM and once a week or so with SuperDuper, an excellent cloning program. So we back them up twice, using different technologies. (just being extra careful!)
Excellent strategy. Many of us do the same (I use CarbonCopyCloner).
For maintenance, we zero our drives once or twice a year, and restore either using Time Machine, or SuperDuper.
Is that really necessary? Have you considered using OnyX or a similar app to clean some things up, or manually doing some clean-up instead?
But WHY does the Public folder come up now? It didn't used to 6 months ago when we restored the same way. TM was perfect then.
Seems to be rather rare. I don't recall more than a couple or three posts here in the last year or so. Sorry, but I have no idea why it happens.
Also, when we restore using TM (and we back up everything on the HD) - when we open MAIL it wants us to restore all emails or reimport them, or something. I didn't bother - just cloned back from SuperDuper, where there are no 'issues'.
I've only seen a brief message (I forget now just what), clicked OK, and it was fine. I think it's related to Time Machine automatically omitting ~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index and ~/Library/Mail/AvailableFeeds, thus needing to rebuild them after a restore. TM does automatically omit several things that aren't needed or can be easily rebuilt, such as system work files, most logs and caches, Spotlight indexes, trash, etc.
So what's the story with MAIL wanting you to reimport emails? I don't recall TM doing that before either?
Next time it happens, get the exact wording, so we can tell if it's really a problem or just something being rebuilt.
Thanks so much for your knowledgeable input. I'm just curious why things aren't working so well. Is it Snowie? Maybe with regular leopard it worked better? I forget.
Depends who you talk to! Some folks had problems on Leo that were fixed on SL; others found new problems with SL. My guess is, overall it's a toss-up.

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I deleted my private folder how do I restore it without losing everything?

I restored my system through time capsule and everything was fine. I was browsing my hard drive labeled "Macintosh HD" a short time ago and noticed a folder called "private".
This is a folder I have never seen before, and foolishly I just deleted it. It is still sitting in my recycle bin, but when I click "put back" or try and copy and paste it back into its original spot it prompts for my administrator password. For some reason it is not accepting my administrator password, I don't know why it isn't, but it isn't.
I have since read that it is very bad to delete the "private" folder however I really can't afford right now to reinstall another time capsule backup and lose more downtime.
How can I replace my private folder? I have a Snow Leopard install disk on hand, and the computer is still running. If I restart my computer without fixing anything it's going to probably not start up because I trashed this important folder. Is there a way I can re-copy this folder from my Snow Leopard install disk or from my time capsule backup?
And for some reason now Terminal is not working, it must be, because the private folder has been deleted..
NEED HELP!

yes, it's very bad to touch this folder and the reason your admin password is not working is because this folder contains some important files governing how an admin password can be used. you can put it back by booting from the SL install DVD and doing it from there using terminal.
insert the install DVd, reboot and hold "c" at the chime. this will boot you into SL installer. once there start terminal from Utilities menu and enter the following command
cp -rf /Volumes/"drive name"/Users/username/.Trash/private /Volumes/"drive name"
put the name of your main hard drive in two places in that command. KEEP the quotes. also put the short name of your user instead of username in the command. It's VERY important to enter the command correctly. mind the spaces in the command.
to verify that the command worked run
ls -la /Volumes/"drive name"/private
after it's done. it should list the contents of the copied folder.

IPad Folders will not appear after restore. PLEASE HELP!

Hi guys,
first of all thank you all. I am new at this forum and I see it is very helpfull. I have a little annoying problem. I have an iPad 1. I have done a constant back up, but when I had to restore it from the last back up I did, everything was synched back to my iPad except the fact that all chosen apps where all messed up and the folders were gone. Can somebody tell me for the future how can I do a back and avoid that after restoring all apps are messed up and make sure the iPad reappears exactely how it was (folders included)? Many thankx in advance.

I copied this from a post a while back. For some reason the iPad likes to "blow up" the folder structure for some users from time to time. This is NOT my advice, but I thought it was interesting reading and it DID seem to make sense.
I have never experienced this destruction of folders myself when syncing and I have never restored my iPad. See if this won't help you in the future.
There is a secret as to why you are losing your folder arrangements.
They can automatically unpack on a sync.
We should all know there are screens off to the right of the valid eleven home pages. If your last page is full of icons and you inadvertently add another something is shoved off to the right. If you move home screens around using iTunes this also happens.
If any icon filled with apps falls off to the right it will unpack and make a mess. If you move a home page filled with folders which are filled with icons around you can lose them all as they will unpack when you sync to iTunes.
The best choice is to take the right most page and MAKE SURE NO FOLDERS ARE EVER IN THE RIGHT MOST PAGE. That gives you safety room from inadvertently scooting one or more folders into higher number screens. I place a few standard apps in the right most page to hold it in place.
CREATING FOLDERS
Second you are safer building your folders on the device itself. To do this I move everything off the bottom bar and use it as a placeholder (bus)to shuttle apps around as I figure out what group they should be added to. I have over 800 apps in 22 GB on the iPad now. Things are well organized and nice looking when scanning the home pages.
When setting it up I just added all the apps at once. Then as I made room on the home screens I paused made sure my 'bus' was empty, then shut down the iPad to power off and back on again. This cleans up memory and on reboot the iPad will add as many of the hidden apps to the space on your eleven home pages. There after it became a session of rinse and repeat until all the apps I wanted where filed away and arranged.
Use meaningful folder names.
Apps from **
There are some real junk apps that some how I managed to grab in the past. Others are surpassed by obviously more powerful and functional apps that have recently appeared so there is no sense in keeping them. If you delete them off the iPad they will reappear on the next sync unless you delete them from iTunes.
How do you remember to delete them from iTunes too? When I get to the delete confirmation screen I take a screenshot which is stored in my Photos roll. Then I browse that roll while before the computer and find each app that needs to be permanently deleted. After deleting it from the PC I then delete the reminder picture.
Message was edited by: Demo

After SL upgrade - internal HDD now writes very slowly

After upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard, a strange problem has appeared on my Mid-2007 iMac, and I still haven't found a solution...
I backed up my system, erased and did a clean install of SL on my internal HDD, and proceeded to restore my data. This is when I noticed the problem: *Copying data from my external drives to the internal iMac HDD, the maximum transfer rate I can achieve is approx 2MB/sec.* It may or may not have had anything to do with SL, perhaps just a coincidence of timing, although the problem definitely wasn't there before the "upgrade".
Normally, write speeds used to be ~50MB/sec from my FW800 drives. I've tried from all my drives (I have 6 external drives - 4-USB 2.0 and 2-FW800) and the results are consistently the same for each. Copying data from an external drive to another external drive is at normal speeds, so this rules out any bus issues. Copying data FROM the iMac HDD to any external drive is normal - ~30MB/sec to USB 2.0 drives and ~65MB/sec to FW800 drives.
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FYI - I've reset the PRAM and NVRAM (4 chimes) and left my iMac unplugged for over an hour to reset the SMC...
Thanks for your time. I've tried to be as clear and thorough as possible. This is definitely a strange one, and so far I'm stumped...

Thanks, I checked and everything is properly set - GUID, 1 partition - simple (like I've done many times before).. I've tried just about everything I can think of now (except for the zero erase - it's going to take hours so I'll do it overnight tonight) yet nothing makes sense, and I'm still only getting 2MB/sec write speed..
I'm thinking the drive is pooched and I'm going to pick up a replacement this weekend unless I can figure something out sooner.. Would be a good excuse to upgrade to a 1TB model anyways, perhaps a 1.5TB if the iMac can handle it?
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Hi,
I was having trouble with my iphone 4 and went onto itunes (latest version) to back it up and restore.
After the restore, I got an error message saying that it couldn't restore the phone.
However, now all I have on my iphone is the little itunes logo with a lead and an arrow pointing to it.
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KevinR_VZW
Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

Never appears after restoring...and doesn't appear to allow reinstall

Hi.
My ipod is a cute little thing but it is not happy. Once before I needed to reinstall it. My colleagues did it for me and then everything was good.
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When unplugged (only when I shut down as I can't eject), the ipod seems as though it would work, but I can't get music onto it to check.
I did change the drive path to move it from a LAN space...no luck.
I looked up reinstalling but the directions require Itunes to recognise the Ipod, which it only does in time to suggest restoring it. I can't figure out how to do the reinstall, although it worked last time.
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nevermind
i forgot the attachment:
btw: "variant" is likely the data type with poorest performance in any language. if you need variable data transfer you should consider to use something like
test(uint8* data, int32 numbytes)
or something like that.
Best regards
chris
CL(A)Dly bending G-Force with LabVIEW
famous last words: "oh my god, it is full of stars!"
Attachments:
variant2variant.JPG ‏17 KB

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Is there any way short of manually sifting through the files for me to rebuild the year/month/day chronological folder structure I was storing them in?
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One option is to use Smart Collections to have Lightroom automatically put files into collections by either capture date or edit date. You can create the collections by year, month, day, a range of dates, etc. If you want to have four years of photos grouped by month, you'd have to create 48 Smart Collections for the 48 months (if you have photos captured or edited in all 48 months).
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Did the recovery procedure 3 times with same results. Checked BIOS to make sure it is set to boot from HDD after the install.
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Thank you for your reply. I doubt it is the hd. I took it out of the laptop, put it into an external usb-pata enclosure, formatted it under windows, copied files to it...deleted files, etc. all was fine. I'll install DSLinux just as a test (maybe something wrong with boot block but I doubt it.)
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I'll still need to slipstream in the driver updates no matter which route I'll go.
This kind of **** really ********* me off....grrrr

What is the Macintosh HD/private/ folder?

Hi all, lots of strange stings are happening on my Mac lately, but this may not be related.
However this folder:
I have never seen before. Can anyone elaborate on what it is, and if it's nothing to worry about - or is

There are a number of important folders used by the system that are normally hidden, and the /private folder is one of them. In your case, that folder has now become visible. This does not in itself affect its function.
There are two ways that a normally-hidden item can become visible-
1) A global change in Finder's behavior ("show all files"), such that all hidden items are now visible.
2) A specific change only to the item in question, such that it it loses its "hidden" flag and is now visible even when Finder is behaving normally.
Your screenshot of the top level of Macintosh HD shows a "normal-appearing" /private folder, and doesn't show a number of other essential items that are always there but normally hidden. I therefore think in this case we are dealing with the second issue above. This "sometimes happens" for unclear reasons.
By example, one of my own bootable disks normally looks like this in Finder's list view:
One can make all hidden items visible to Finder , as per the first case above, by using a Terminal command or by using a 3rd-party utility program. If I do this, I see:
There are many previously hidden items now visible, and they all have a dim, ghosted look, including /private.
If I reverse that global change in Finder, and instead remove the specific "hidden" flag only on the /private folder as per the second case, I instead see this:
Of the normally invisible items, only the /private folder is now visible, and it is not "ghosted" - it appears normal, as did yours. So your situation evidently corresponds to this second case, where the Finder is functioning normally but the /private folder has lost its hidden flag. As mentioned, the reason is usually unclear.
You should be able to restore the invisibility of the /private folder with this Terminal command:
sudo chflags hidden /private
However as long as you remember not to go poking around inside the /private folder, it's also OK just to leave it alone.

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After restoring of controlfile I see distorted redo logs metadata (column v$logfile.member ) :
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Hello Grirsh
Thank You.
You mean you are having some other name of redolog files than in the folder ?Yes , You are right. In database never was redo with this path.
If yes, it means they may be something else, because Oracle is just using the those files which are showing in column of member of v$logfile view.Sorry. Could I ask You please to explain this phrase, as I wrote In database never was redo with this path,
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"private" folder has appeared after restore to internal HDD

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