As a small business or personal user it is ideal for your everyday backup needs.

The file can be found at:
Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices > SystemVersion.plist

Mac OS X System Version

 

 

 

The SystemVersion.plist file should look a bit like the picture below. I have outlined the relevant part in red:

System Version Plist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update.

Alternatively you could paste the following command into terminal:

defaults read defaults read /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist | grep "ProductVersion"

This will show you the version of the currently booted system. You would need to change the first bit if you wanted to find out from another mounted drive.

The output will be:

    ProductVersion = "10.7.2";

In my limited testing, this seems to have an error when run from 10.5. It says the file doesn’t exist. I will look into this some more.

Problem 1. – GPT Partition

Installed Windows 7 on half a 500GB drive and left 250GB free for Ubuntu. When booting to install Linux, it didn’t see Windows 7 due to the GPT partition that Windows 7 uses by default.

Solution 1.

Used Gparted from the Linux live cd to format the drive with an MBR partition layout. (Note:- This destroyed the original Windows installation.) Then installed Windows back to the drive. This time, Ubuntu saw Windows 7 during installation and was happy to install alongside it.

Problem 2. – Default Windows Dual Boot

Although the machine was now happily dual booting, it would default to Ubuntu, regardless of which changes i made to the grub config. Startup manager would make changes to grub, but it would still default to Ubuntu.

Solution 2.

Nariub on the Ubuntu forums suggested changing the os-prober number, so it loads that first. This puts Windows at the top, making it the default. Perfect for what we needed.

The command for this, which worked for us on Ubuntu 11.10 & Windows 7:

mv /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober /etc/grub.d/09_os-prober

update-grub

So now we have the machine booting as we want, with each operating system happily taking up half of the 500GB drive.

First run Cmd (Command Line) as Administrator (click Start -> and type cmd. Right click on Cmd and choose “Run As Administrator”). If you followed correctly this should give you a black command line window with white text.

Then type:

net accounts /maxpwage:unlimited

And press return or enter.

It should congratulate you, or say successful (can’t remember the exact wording).

The password should then last forever, or until it is changed manually.

Note: It is good practice to change passwords regularly, however outside of corporate IT land can be a huge hassle. Just ask my brother  

Anyway, the fix is easy and involves turning the dock from 3D to 2D mode.

The Terminal commands are as follows:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

killall Dock

The first command sets the Dock into 2D mode, the second command resets the Dock to allow the changes to be seen.

Below is the About This Mac screen. It’s an old (Powerbook G4 Style) MacBook Pro, Core 2 Duo.

Now I just need to find out why it takes so long to boot up.

Luckily there is a simple terminal command to make these files hidden again. It doesn’t delete them, just changes their file attributes.

sudo chflags hidden filename

sudo allows you to run commands as Super User so be careful! It will ask for a password (but not display it as you type…)

Where it says filename you can either replace it with a file or folder name, or drag a load of folders onto the terminal window and it will fill out the names for you.

An example below:

sudo chflags hidden /var

That would hide the var folder on the root of the boot drive.

I found this really helpful but as usual use it at your own risk…

The process for restoration varies a little bit depending upon how your Mac is currently set up.

Best Case Scenario:

If you have a new hard drive with a fresh system installed, and have not yet clicked through the Setup Assistant screens follow this guide. >>>

2^nd Best Case Scenario:

If you have a new hard drive and have set it up with a username you will need to follow this slightly more complicated guide. >>>

Migration Assistant

So you have a Mac which boots up to a desktop as normal, but without your recovered data. This is not quite ideal, and gives us a few things to sort out before the migration.

Arrange.

You will first have to backup any newly created data. If something goes wrong with migration then you don’t want to lose your new data. If this new system has been created with the same username as the old one, you will not be able to import the old user without renaming which is not advised. After you have backed up your files, you could open “System Preferences / Users & Groups,” (“Accounts” in pre Lion systems) and rename the current user to something else. This will allow you to transfer your original user account and Applications into the correct locations on the new system. If your system is set to automatically login to a user account (ie. doesn’t require a password when you boot) then you will need to turn off “Automatic Login” setting under Users & Groups to allow you to access the old user account.

Fingers crossed you should be ready to migrate.

Connect.

Connect the new hard drive to your Mac. If it’s a desktop 3.5” drive then plug in the power adapter and switch it on. If you are restoring to a laptop then it would be a good idea to have the AC adapter plugged in, as this can take a while.

Migrate.

Go to “Applications / Utilities” and launch “Migration Assistant”. Choose “From another Mac, PC, Time Machine Backup or other disk.” Then choose the second option; “From Time Machine Backup or other disk.” You should see the orange icon for the external drive, labelled with your job number. Click on it and then click continue.

Select.

You can choose to migrate everything, or be a bit selective. You cannot choose individual files to migrate, only whole user accounts, Applications, Settings, and other files. Make your choice and click next.

Wait.

The migration itself can take a while depending how much data you have. Once complete you can boot into the Mac and it will feel very familiar. As if nothing ever failed. If you backed up any files from the new system then now would be a good time to load them back on.

Migration Assistant generally does a good job of transferring your data and software. If any software installs files into the Mac system in unusual locations it may need to be reinstalled, but most Applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop will be transferred correctly.

Connect.

Connect the new hard drive to your Mac. If it’s a desktop 3.5” drive then plug in the power adapter and switch it on. The Mac should be off at this point. If you are restoring to a laptop then it would be a good idea to have the AC adapter plugged in, as this can take a while.

Power.

Power on the Mac, and wait for it to load the setup assistant. You will be asked a few questions so answer as necessary.

Migrate.

Choose “Migrate from another disk or Time Machine backup,” and then click next. You should see the orange icon for the external drive, labelled with your job number. Click on it and then click continue.

Select.

You can choose to migrate everything, or be a bit selective. You cannot choose individual files to migrate, only whole user accounts, Applications, Settings, and other files. Make your choice and click next.

Wait.

The migration itself can take a while depending how much data you have. Once complete you can boot into the Mac and it will feel very familiar. As if nothing ever failed.

Setup Assistant generally does a good job of transferring your data and software. If any software installs files into the Mac system in unusual locations it may need to be reinstalled, but most Applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop will be transferred correctly.

Some Raw Word documents

What is RAW data?

Raw data is what we get when we recover files without their folder and file names. Instead of a My Documents folder, with photos and documents arranged into separate folders, what we get is a folder named JPEG for example, with thousands of consecutively numbered jpg files. The same with office documents, you would get a folder with thousands of doc, xls, docx or xlsx files.

These raw files will be fully usable and contain all the same info that they did originally. You will still be able to open them, edit them and save them, they are just unnamed.

Why is this data in RAW format?

When we recover data, we always prefer to get it back in the original structured form. When data has been deleted from a Mac, or when a hard drive has been reformatted and then partially overwritten, it can be impossible to rebuild all of the data in structured form, as the structure has been overwritten or damaged. This is when we opt for RAW files.

With a RAW recovery, what we are basically doing is searching the whole hard drive for files in known formats. This means we usually get a lot of office documents, jpg images, photoshop psd files and some others. If we need to find an unusual file type then we need a few sample files to be able to generate the correct scan info. RAW recovery is not always possible for every type of file. An example is Apple Garageband project files, which are actually just folders with the name .band on the end. On the mac, these folders are treated as packages, with folders and files inside that you don’t usually see,  (If you right click one and choose ‘Show Package Contents’ you will see what I mean,)  but for the purposes of RAW recovery we cannot get back those files. (We would however get back the RAW AIFF files and recordings from within the projects. It’s not ideal but may be better than nothing.)

What to do with the RAW files

If there is only a small number of files, then you can manually open them all up, see what’s inside and then rename them to something useful. Luckily, for certain file types, there are other ways to make sense of them. It’s called meta data, meta tags or EXIF data.

This meta information is stored inside the files, so even if the file and folder names are lost, we still have the tags.

A brilliant piece of software called Amok EXIF sorter will plough through thousands of jpg files, read their date tags and then place them in dated folders. It can also do other fancy things with tags, but default setting will create a decent structure.

For music, iTunes or any other music manager will usually rename the files in the library based on the artist and album tags. In iTunes, just make sure it is set to: ‘Keep iTunes media folder organised.’

Document files such as doc, docx, xls and xlsx also have some useful tags that we can use to make sense of the masses of numbered files.

Raw File Tags

In Windows, set the View to ‘Details’ and you should see a series of headings such as Name, Date Modified, Type, and Size. Date modified will show the date that the files were recovered so is useless for this task, however if you right click on this heading you will see other available columns, with ticks beside a few of them. The ‘More…‘ option at the bottom contains loads of tags that we can use to sort the data.

Good headings for office documents are Author and Date last saved. You can experiment and see if any of the other tags are more useful to your specific data.

Good headings for jpg files are Date taken (Date picture taken) and Camera model. Again, there are others which may be useful.

Raw Files Showing Author Tag