WHERE is DESKTOP folder on old HD? i.e. files that where on previous deskto

Bottom line, HD crashed, new install, new HD, this HD which won't boot is seen via USB external box, want to see what files where on the desktop before wiping.
Also, is there a secure way to erase the disk?
Thanks

If there's a folder named Desktop Folder on the top level of the old disk, open it and look for the items. If there isn't a Desktop Folder or the Desktop Folder is empty, open the Users folder, and then look at the folders inside for one named Desktop. There will be one of these for each folder except for Shared which exists in the Users folder. There may also be another desktop folder at /private/var/root/Desktop/, but it's only accessible to the root user, and only exists if you logged in as root through the GUI at some point.
You can securely erase the disk from the Disk Utility, which is in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder.
(14183)

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Hi everyone,
This is my first forum post, and I'm downright desperate.
I have migrated from my old MBP to a brand new one this weekend, and used Time Machine in an external HD to move my data. I had TM set up since February, with no options/exceptions.
As far as I can tell, everything migrated to the new computer perfectly (applications, preferences, documents, music, cookies, etc) except there is nothing on my Desktop after migration. It just so happens that I have (had?) a folder in my Desktop with all my graduate school work.
I have already looked in TM in all the backups since February, and there is no Desktop folder in my user account folder in any of them. Does this mean that TM has never backed up my Desktop from the beginning???
(BTW, I'm also having trouble to simply search for specific files when I look into the TM backup folder in my external HD. Whenever I use Spotlight, it only finds stuff on other folders in that external HD, but it doesn't return any hits from the TM backup folder, even when I look for files that I can see there just by browsing. How can I solve this?)
If it's true that TM never backed up my Desktop, my problem is then getting to my Desktop in the old computer. Trouble is, I had Leopard reinstalled at the Apple Store when I bought the new computer, since the system was supposedly backed up. As far as I know, the old computer was wiped clean and Leopard reinstalled in about 20 minutes by a Genius.
I have been told by them after the fact to use Data Rescue II to try and scour the old computer's internal drive by booting it up in target mode, but I haven't attempted it yet. I was told that if the Leopard reinstall was done in a specific way, I would be able to get to the old files with Data Rescue II still with their names and folder structures if they haven't been overwritten. However, if it was done 'another way', I would have lost the folders and any recovered files would be restored to a new location under a generic name like 'recover000001'. I'm afraid that in this case I will be overwhelmed by all the files in my old system (even if DRII supposedly recognizes file types), and I won't be able to sort through all of them to get at my important work.
Does anyone know what is the best way to get my data back???? It will be two years of work down the drain if I can't access the contents of that folder on my old Desktop.
Thanks so much for any advice!

V.K. wrote:
Chico Almendra wrote:
Hi everyone,
This is my first forum post, and I'm downright desperate.
I have migrated from my old MBP to a brand new one this weekend, and used Time Machine in an external HD to move my data. I had TM set up since February, with no options/exceptions.
As far as I can tell, everything migrated to the new computer perfectly (applications, preferences, documents, music, cookies, etc) except there is nothing on my Desktop after migration. It just so happens that I have (had?) a folder in my Desktop with all my graduate school work.
I have already looked in TM in all the backups since February, and there is no Desktop folder in my user account folder in any of them. Does this mean that TM has never backed up my Desktop from the beginning???
yes, that's what it means.
I don't understand. Why would it be that TM did not backup my Desktop? The Geniuses were not able to answer this question. I'm completely sure I didn't mark any exceptions when I set it up in February, and I've read other people also had similar problems with some of their folders and/or files (there's another thread where another user lost his Downloads folder; I accidentally replied to it instead of creating this new topic -- my apologies).
(BTW, I'm also having trouble to simply search for specific files when I look into the TM backup folder in my external HD. Whenever I use Spotlight, it only finds stuff on other folders in that external HD, but it doesn't return any hits from the TM backup folder, even when I look for files that I can see there just by browsing. How can I solve this?)
you have to use spotlight from TM interface, not directly from finder. start TM, scroll to a backup and use the search field to start a search.
That worked great; thanks. Is there a way to search across different backup dates in one go, or do I have to keep clicking back through time with the same search string?
If it's true that TM never backed up my Desktop, my problem is then getting to my Desktop in the old computer. Trouble is, I had Leopard reinstalled at the Apple Store when I bought the new computer
I don't understand why
you did that. did you have some problems with your old computer?
I didn't have any problems with the old computer. I was actually giving it to my mother for Mothers Day as her first Mac, and I wanted to make sure she would have as 'brand new' Mac experience as I could provide her.
, since the system was supposedly backed up. As far as I know, the old computer was wiped clean and Leopard reinstalled in about 20 minutes by a Genius.
I have been told by them after the fact to use Data Rescue II to try and scour the old computer's internal drive by booting it up in target mode, but I haven't attempted it yet.
this is your one and only hope of getting anything back if you did an erase and install. if you did an archive and install then old your old data will be in the "previous systems" folder at the top level of the hard drive.
Message was edited by: V.K.
Thanks. You reckon professional data recovery services would come up with more stuff (especially filenames and folder structures) than I would be able to, if I tried using DR myself? I'm terrified of going through my whole HD and sorting out the hundreds of thousands of files that weren't in the desktop in the first place.
I appreciate your help, V.K.; I still cannot get over the fact that TM can be so unreliable. What could have caused this catastrophe on my computer and in other users? They were lucky that they still had their data when they noticed TM wasn't backing it up, and the solutions were bone-chillingly similar to Windows voodoo tricks (e.g. delete the old TM plist, hard reboot, pray, and see if it works now). If this is the case, I can't see any options other than doing full manual backups periodically, but that defeats the TM purpose in the first place. Any thoughts or ideas?
Thanks!

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With OS9 the visible Desktop was shared by all the mounted disks -- if you had a file on another drive, you could just drag it (its icon) to the Desktop (without copying it).
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I notice the extra (empty) partitions I've created on my hard drive each have a "Desktop" folder on themAFAIK it is meaningless. You can delete them and I have. Or, save your files outside of the desktop folder.
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Old Pre-Leopard Desktop Folder Lurking and Causing problems

I'm confused, is this supposed to happen? After wondering where all my downloads had gone, I realized the old desktop was still lurking on my computer. I only realized this because I had changed icons. Under "devices/macintosh hd" there is a desktop folder, the pre-leopard one, the current one doesn't exist there, just the pre-leopard one and the os9 folder. Is that normal? It causes problems sometimes when saving things from the internet or email applications. I have to be careful when choosing the location because saving to desktop will sometimes send it to the old one and the files then don't show up on my actual desktop. They also don't seem to appear in spotlight when this happens. Is there a fix for this? Thanks.
Message was edited by: texasstar7

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Open a Finder window on the current location. Open another Finder window for your Home folder. Drag the Desktop folder from the current location window into the Home folder window.
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If you have nothing in the Desktop folder in the Library location, then just delete the folder. In your Home folder you can create a new folder and name it 'Desktop' if one is not in your Home folder.

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Backup.003.fbw
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and so on ....
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when i try to open any other type of file (such as .pdf's or word documents, or spreadsheets), it basically says the same thing.
"Can not access the document C:\(filelocation). The document may already be open or a read only document. The name and path may be invalid. The document may no longer exist, or it may already be open".
PLEASE HELP   All i want to do is restore my pictures, documents, and emails .   HOW CAN I RESTORE THESE FILES TO MY NEW COMPUTER ????????

I owned an HP Pavilion A6037C desktop computer (Running Vista). It began to give me serious issues in July so i used the HP System Backup and Restore program to create a backup of all my files. i saved these files on an external HD so i wouldn't lose my files if the computer crashed. This backup was created in a folder called MINWINPC. In that folder was this file name "Backup Files 2011-5-7 234595". in that folder was a file list
Backup.001.App
Backup.002.fbw
Backup.003.fbw
Backup.004.fbw
and so on ....
I have since removed the first computer (although i still have it in my posession), and have replaced it with an HP Pavilion P6245f desktop running Windows 7.
Now that i have a newer desktop in place i wanted to install some of my old files from my backup that is saved on my external hard drive. i've connected the external hard drive to the new computer and i've ran the Backup.001.App. It restored my old files to a folder on my desktop called "Shortcut to System Recovery Files". It's a rather large file (i believe 50 GB) that is stored in another folder titled "C". In this folder i can see the seperate file folders i'm assuming were from my original desktop. when i access my username and select for instance "My Pictures" folder, it shows a list of all my orginal files. When i double click a picture, it says :
"File not readable. You can not open this file. Please check the readability of this file."
when i try to open any other type of file (such as .pdf's or word documents, or spreadsheets), it basically says the same thing.
"Can not access the document C:\(filelocation). The document may already be open or a read only document. The name and path may be invalid. The document may no longer exist, or it may already be open".
PLEASE HELP   All i want to do is restore my pictures, documents, and emails .   HOW CAN I RESTORE THESE FILES TO MY NEW COMPUTER ????????

[SOLVED] Firefox recreating Desktop folder

I run Xfce with no desktop icons, so I have no use for the ~/Desktop folder, which I've removed. I've noticed that occasionally the Desktop folder will reappear in my home folder. I saw a thread where a user claimed they saw this behavior after clicking "the upload button" in Firefox. It does seem that clicking "Browse" on an <input type='file'> element will default to your Desktop folder if there's no "last viewed" folder available, and recreate the Desktop folder otherwise.
Source for Firefox/xulrunner:
mozilla-2.0/content/html/content/src/nsHTMLInputElement.cpp:
// Attempt to retrieve the last used directory from the content pref service
nsCOMPtr<nsILocalFile> localFile;
nsHTMLInputElement::gUploadLastDir->FetchLastUsedDirectory(doc->GetDocumentURI(),
getter_AddRefs(localFile));
if (!localFile) {
// Default to "desktop" directory for each platform
nsCOMPtr<nsIFile> homeDir;
NS_GetSpecialDirectory(NS_OS_DESKTOP_DIR, getter_AddRefs(homeDir));
localFile = do_QueryInterface(homeDir);
filePicker->SetDisplayDirectory(localFile);
Last edited by gavinhungry (2011-04-30 06:20:46)

The creation of a ~/Desktop directory by Firefox is a feature; Mozilla is following freedesktop.org implied guidelines. You can stop the creation of the ~/Desktop directory by editing or creating a file, ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs
In that file you specify which directories are defaults for the common directories (common as specified by freedesktop.org). After the user-dirs.dirs file is written, Firefox won't create a Desktop directory again. Here's my user's user-dirs.dirs:
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="/home/casey/"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="/home/casey/downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="/home/casey/"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="/home/casey/shared/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="/home/casey/working"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="/home/casey/music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="/home/casey/pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/home/casey/pictures/videos"
I believe the package xdg-utils must be installed for this to work. See http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs.

WHERE is DESKTOP folder on old HD? i.e. files that where on previous deskto

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