Apple has admitted that its latest operating system Snow Leopard harbours a bug that can accidentally delete data belonging to the computer’s owner.
The problem occurs when some users who upgraded to the Snow Leopard – which was released at the end of August – log into a “guest” account on their machines. When they log back in under their own name, all of the files in their home directory – such as documents, music and videos – have been deleted. One of the customer reports in the Apple discussion forum, “I had the guest account enabled on my MBP – I accidentally clicked on that when I went to log in. It took a few minutes to log in then after I had logged out of that account and back into mine my enter home directory had been wiped. All of doc, musics, etc gone.”
Another user raises two issues with the Snow Leopard — Home folder lost – user account restored to default. He states: I installed SL last weekend, no major problems but many annoying bugs. This morning when I woke up the computer had hung – screen saver was frozen. I held down the power key to shutdown. Turned the computer back on, clicked on my user account icon, and it was like I’d just picked up a new computer… my home folder had been replaced with a “straight out of the box” home folder. Standard desktop, standard dock, nothing in my documents folder, standard library. My entire home folder is gone.
The partition where my home folder lives is now virtually empty. I used stellar pheonix to try to recover the files from my home folder, but it did not find them as lost not as deleted files. It gave me the option of recovering about 40GB of deleted files, but they were legitimately deleted files.
Nice! Although I do have little sympathy for people who would apply a major upgrade without a backup.
Hey, that my honey you got pictured on your box!!!
Article aside, the irony here is that most users report an average of about 17 gigs freed up by the Snow Leopard install. Really that chick ought to be so tiny and frail as to be clinging to life.
All the lip service Apple gave/gives MS about Vista and they pull crap like this?
I don’t recall Vista eating user accounts.
Yeah, but at least Macs don’t get viruses and crash all the time.
#4 – It’s coming.
Greg sez, “Yeah, but at least Macs don’t get viruses and crash all the time.”
My wife now has to get a new Macbook because her current old now shuts down at random intervals (because of a power-connector/battery problem.
Meanwhile, my 4-year-old HP laptop is still running fine, and has always been faster than hers.
Her previous Macbook, too, had to be trashed after 30 months or so because of the not-uncommon problem of the Mac hard drive meltdown.
Meanwhile, both of the cases of these Macbooks were coming apart at the seams after about 6 months of use.
Macbook hardware is absolute crap, designed for about a year’s use.
#4. Greg “Yeah, but at least Macs don’t get viruses and crash all the time.”
Yes they do crash , plus IT CAN DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA!!!!!!!!!
Aplologist.
Apparently macs dont need viruses to destroy all your data. Truly a technological advancement.
it seems macs come data destroying code built right into the os..
now that is efficiency!
What’s the problem? Steve must have have just decided you needed a clean install so get over it. You know it’s for your own good.
Seriously buy, beg or borrow an external hard drive and back up. There is no way of knowing when your hard drive or OS is going to trash your data but you do know that it’s just a matter of time until the hardware or software trashes your data.
Rule number two is wait a while and let the other guy find out about things like this first.
If you did a Snow Leopard upgrade disable the guest account. If you never enabled it then your fine.
Racism, ageism, and now, fatism.
deowll writes, “What’s the problem? Steve must have have just decided you needed a clean install so get over it. You know it’s for your own good.”
Hah! thank you! This sums up the Apple experience for me perfectly. “You want to do *what*?” says the Mac. “No, look: that’s not something you should want to do. What you’re desiring to do right now is not something that people in the know desire to do. Do you understand now? Good boy, well done.”
Faxon writes, “Racism, ageism, and now, fatism.”
You’re right. Racism doesn’t exist, and should probably be trivialized.
You want all your files ogne? There’s an app for that!
BTW, too late for the Bush admin to use it, but right on time for Obama to take advantage of it.
#4 Right, because they generate their own code to delete user data. No need to bring a third party to that.
#6 Too bad you had to go thru personal experience to know that mac is just crap.
#6 Wretchedguru,
“Macbook hardware is absolute crap, designed for about a year’s use.”
That’s something people working at marketing call “planned obsolescence.” So it’s not a bug but a feature.
Apple should have used Microsoft’s “Danger” system to backup the data.
When I upgraded my Macbook Pro from Tiger to Leopard, it wiped out everything… wouldn’t even boot. I took it to the Apple Genius bar. They kept it for 3 days, and told me I needed a new HDD. They claimed that the fact that it died during an upgrade was coincidental.
They further insulted my intelligence by claiming that is was impossible for their OS upgrade to screw things up so bad. Therefore, it must be the hardware.
I called BS. I made them install a new HDD, install a clean Leopard on it, and give me back my old HDD unmolested.
I installed the old HDD into an external USB sled, and was able to recover all my data off of it. Then I turned it into a TimeMachine backup drive and it has yet to fail.
After that experience, I have no interest in upgrading to SL and going through that crap again.
#4 I haven’t had a virus or crash on my Windows machines for years. That’s because I take care of my systems.
Two days ago, iTunes offered me an update to my iPod Touch and wiped out the entire thing.
Apple doesn’t need viruses, they’ll wipe-out your stuff on their own.
The same thing happened to me. Go to the Apple site… there’s an easy way to recover your data.