Very odd CF card /  missing files issue

This one has me stumped. Here are the specifics I've been able to recollect:
Nikon D100 camera
Sandisk 8GB Ultra CF card
1 yr old iMac with "PocketReader" multi card reader
Problem: 40 NEF files just vanished from the CF card after it was removed from my D100 and placed into the card reader on the iMac. The images were all there while the card was in the camera because I had just shown them to a colleague for quick review.
This is what I can remember of the events that led up to the NEF files absolutely disappearing from the card while leaving 8 other files intact in the same folder - as well as all other data on the card.
I had been using the card reader earlier in the day on the iMac to transfer NEF files from the CF card to the computer for editing in Lightroom.
When I needed to leave the office I didn't "eject" the CF card/card reader from the iMac before I removed the CF card so there was a window open with the CF card directory showing. I simply pulled the card and went on my way.
You don't have to eject a card reader to remove the card on a PC - which I also use in the office. You just close the folder on the card and pull it out of the reader.
This is my only thought as to how the problem may have occurred. When I returned to the office later in the day with the new NEF files on the CF card I put the card in the reader and opened the drive window, revealing - no new NEF files in the Nikon directory, only the older ones from a couple days ago.
I noticed there was still a CF card window open from the earlier session. It, too, had no NEF files other than the older ones. I closed the window and re-opened the CF card but still no files.
Which brings me to my speculative question. Is it possible that somehow not closing the window the first time, then re-inserting the card with new files simply and instantaneously reverted the card directory to its original state? This is the only thing I can think of that could somehow be responsible for the issue.
I ran Disk Utility but it did nothing except say the card was error-free. I have DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro 5 but they generally don't do much for CF or SD card data recovery. I still have the card connected to a PC and am looking for any other apps that might "see" something.
I ran 4 PC utilities to try to recover the files but none saw files that had been deleted - and that is the real head-scratcher. The files have no sign of existing in any way at this point. They were there when the card was in the camera but when I put it in the card reader they absolutely vanished.
Any suggestions or speculation is welcome.
Rick

Well noones bothering to answer so might as well close this, been open too long.
Thanks for the help.

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    Hello, fellow non-power-users. I just wanted to post something here that I've learned with my travails and travels using LightRoom 3. In the past, Adobe has paid me to write for them, and I'm a professional writer. So why am I doing this for free? Because I wish to heck I'd understood this stuff before I dove into LR. Somehow, even with reading a book on the program, I didn't really get it.
    1) Most of the people who are kind enough to post and help on Adobe support and other forums on the Interwebs are power users of Lightroom. The great thing is, they often know what they're talking about. The bad thing is, many of them don't understand what it's like to be a non-power-user who really has no intention of becoming a power user. Be very, very careful before you try to take their advice about any large issue that might have serious consequences for your photos.
    2) LR has about forty million ways to do things, so it can be overwhelming, and you may also receive lots of contradictory information about how to accomplish stuff. If you're like me---not a professional photographer, more a refugee from the annoying land of iPhoto who just needs a *little* more power and customization---you may have trouble streamlining, figuring out the few things you actually need the program to do for you. Try some introductory videos and tutorials, even books, but don't expect them to solve your real problems with the program.
    3) Before you begin, grasp a few concepts:
         a. When you're working in LR, you're working with a "catalog." It shows you images of your photos, but these aren't really your photos. Your actual photos are *files* that live on your computer somewhere. Think of it as a slideshow projected on a wall: you can see the photos on the wall, but they aren't the "real photo." If you walked up to the wall and painted on the projection of a slide, the "real photo" file would not be changed. What LR does is keep track of those wall paintings for you, so if you wanted to print up a version of that slide and include your brush strokes, LR could do that for you. The catalog is a type of database.
         b. So where are those real photos, those files? Probably all over your computer in different places. You may want to consolidate them all in one place before you start using Lightroom. Here's why: once Lightroom thinks your "real photo" is in a certain place, it doesn't want you to move the "real photo" file. Say you have a photo called that someone sent in email. You put it on your desktop. Now you are tempted to drag-n-drop it onto Lightroom. DO NOT DO IT. Because someday, you might want that photo to not clutter up your desktop. You'll drag it to another folder on your hard drive, and BOOM, now Lightroom cannot find the photo.
    You can't work on the photo from within Lightroom. You can't print it. Lightroom will show a question mark ? on its wall-projector slide of your photo file. Often when someone moves files on their computer, it's not a single file on a desktop. It's a bunch of things they are trying to organize. Adobe knows this, which is why they have a "find missing photos" command. They know you are likely to screw this up. The command will show you those missing files. You have to select them individually by hand and search your computer for them to relink. You can spend a lot of time relinking photos. It sucks. Really sucks.
         c. If you do need to move stuff, Lightroom does let you do it, but only from within the program. So, open up LR, and look in the left-hand column for an item called "Folders." (You will be in Library mode to make this happen.) You can move your "real photo" files around from within this area. It is a clunky process and an enormous pain in the butt.
         d. Rant time: For some reason, one of the most sophisticated and long-lived software companies in history, the developers that completely changed the worlds of art, design, photography, and publishing--you got it, Adobe--have not been able to solve this problem and chase down your real photo files if you moved them from within the Finder, the way you normally move files on a computer. Go figure. (Irrelevant note: I've been using their products since Pagemaker 1.0 and it's sort of astonishing that they've never solved this problem, in LR or InDesign or elsewhere. It's like publishing a magazine using Quark in 1995, rushing to find the messed-up links before you hand-carry your ZIP drive over to the printer. Hee hee.)
    4) Decide whether you want to divide your photos into a few separate catalogs, or whether you want one enormous catalog ("master catalog"). Then try not to change your mind.
    Here is my story:
    Summary: I started with multiple catalogs and regret merging them into one.
    I hired a photographer/supposedly-LR guy to set up my LR and he suggested multiple catalogs, each easily saveable (catalog AND its photos) to a single external hard drive. I only made two: one for family photos, one for a big art project. Whenever I asked questions online about using LR, everyone told me to combine all photos into one big master catalog. Eventually I did, and I regret it. As a non-power-user, I screwed up something in the merging process, and ended up with a lot of question-mark, missing-photo problems, and a bunch of duplicate photos to boot. What a waste of time.
    If you're not a pro, you probably don't need a gigantic single database to deal with. If you're someone who uses Dropbox or another non-Adobe cloud method to store and work with your photos, and you don't have unlimited storage, you may find it way more convenient to have a few different catalogs.
    Power users probably don't screw up the process of merging all their catalogs into one. Power users have, from what I've read online, many complicated ways of making a big master catalog work the way they want, say for working on small numbers of files while traveling with a laptop, and then getting that work into the giant master catalog when they get back home to their studios.
    But I am not a power user, and if you're reading this, you probably aren't a power user either. So perhaps my experience will be useful to you.
    5) Paying for plug-ins to help with all this nonsense.
    You can buy plug-ins that help you do things this application should already do by itself. For example, "Duplicate Finder" goes through and finds all the photos that you've accidentally imported more than once into your catalog. Then you can painstakingly go through, figure out which copy to keep, and delete them. Often, these "duplicate" photos are not duplicates of your "real photo" file. But at some point you moved your "real photo" file while you were tidying up your computer files, and later accidentally re-imported that photo into your LR catalog. Since LR doesn't follow your files around when you move them from within your computer/Finder, LR thinks it's a whole brand-new file. It's like your projector is projecting three images on the wall at the same time. You have to figure out which one to keep, which one will save your wall-painting changes, etc. And it is a huge pain in the butt.
    Note that you can click a box when importing photos, a box that says "Do not import suspected duplicates." This can be really helpful for avoiding duplicates in the first place. It is not, however, infallible.
    OK, I hope this helps someone somewhere. I'm going to go back to the horribly time-consuming task of relinking files and trying to make my brain work the way LR's brain works.

    Glad to help!
    Another good thing to do from time to time is to boot from your install CD, then choose "Disk Utility", then do a check (and repair, if necessary) of your boot disk.
    You can't verify or fix a disk you've started from, thus the need to boot from a CD. You can boot from a second hard disk to do this test if it has MacOS on it.

  • Time Machine and Excel Missing File

    Hello, this is my first posting here and I would appreciate some help.
    An important Excel file of mine just disappeared both on my hard drive as well as on my Time Capsule backup, which is really puzzling me. Here are the facts:
    1. I am using an iMac, running Mac OS X 10.5.8, with Excel:mac 2008 version 12.2.7. I religiously update both my OS and applications, so they are both up to date
    2. Within Excel, if I go to File/Open Recent, there is a dropdown of recently opened files. The missing file is shown there but the "xlsx" tag is missing on that name, oddly. The other files (which are all still there) still have the "xls" or "xlsx" tag. When I click on that file, I get that error message that the file cannot be found
    3. I then opened up my Time Machine on my Time Capsule and went scrolling back in time, and really weirdly, this file is missing in every version of backup. My Time Machine has the default backup of hourly for the past 24 hours, daily for the past month, and weekly before. I went into the folder where I kept the file all the way back to July (when I got the Time Capsule) and this file is missing from EACH backup. All other files are there.
    I work on this file every day and I tend to keep it open on iMac. Usually when Excel crashes or something, it reloads with a recovered version but Excel hasn't crashed recently. I worked on this file as recently as yesterday and saved it in the same place where I've been saving it for the past several months.
    OK, what's changed from yesterday to today? Last night when I updated my software there was an update from Microsoft for a security patch. Could it have detected a virus in this file and deleted this file from my hard drive and then from each and every backup in Time Machine?
    The second change was that I selected "Back Up Now" for the first time on Time Machine last night after that patch. I usually had Time Machine run automatically, but while I was updating, I decided to do a forced backup. Could this forced backup have deleted all prior instances of this file if it was missing on my hard drive then?
    This file is important to me, does anyone have a suggestion as to how I can retrieve it? I thought having Time Capsule would save this kind of headaches. I did a search within the backups, in case the file mysteriously "moved", but the file is just plain missing on all backups and on my hard drive. To make things worse, I Emptied my Trash last night, so I can't see if it is in there. Though, I didn't delete the file.
    Thanks for any help!

    NewMacxUser2010 wrote:
    Hello, this is my first posting here and I would appreciate some help.
    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
    Could it have detected a virus in this file and deleted this file from my hard drive and then from each and every backup in Time Machine?
    Seems very doubtful, especially since there are no viruses that run on OSX.
    There is a small amount of malware, but you have to actively participate in getting it onto your Mac.
    But . . . are you running any anti-virus software? Some of it does cause all sorts of problems on Macs.
    The second change was that I selected "Back Up Now" for the first time on Time Machine last night after that patch. I usually had Time Machine run automatically, but while I was updating, I decided to do a forced backup. Could this forced backup have deleted all prior instances of this file if it was missing on my hard drive then?
    No. A backup is a backup is a backup; they're all the same, no matter how they're started. And Time Machine only deletes things when it "thins" backups. Basically, it keeps all backups for 24 hours, except the first of each day, which it keeps for a month, and the first of each week, which it keeps as long as there's room.
    So it's a bit unpredictable, but if a file is on your Mac for at least 24 hours, its backup will be kept for at least a month.
    This file is important to me, does anyone have a suggestion as to how I can retrieve it? I thought having Time Capsule would save this kind of headaches. I did a search within the backups, in case the file mysteriously "moved", but the file is just plain missing on all backups and on my hard drive. To make things worse, I Emptied my Trash last night, so I can't see if it is in there. Though, I didn't delete the file.
    I don't use Excel, so can't help much with specifics. Is it possible this is some sort of temporary file that's either never actually saved to disk, or is saved with a different name each time?
    Are all your other, similar files in your backups?

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