Entourage mailbox recovery gone bad . . . Now What?

[dicklindbuilders]

Newbie here. Also not a very experienced Mac user, which may or may
not have contributed to the mess I have helped to create on a "friends"
G4 running OS X 10.3.?. The original problem was that the user was
unable to open his Entourage mail app. When we clicked on it, it came
up with the 'you must rebuild your database file error -40.' Of course
neither of the rebuilds worked. I then created a second user on the
machine and was going to copy the original user's Documents folder over
to the new user's Documents folder, but I did it backwards and copied
the brand new, empty folder over his existing Documents folder. IDIOT!
Now I'm attempting to help retrieve the "friends" important files from
his original Documents folder. Are these files recoverable?

I did boot to his old OS 9.2 disk so that we were not using the disk
that contains the overwritten folder. Also started messing around with
the VirtualLab file recovery application from
http://www.binarybiz.com/. The file list search was started last night
and took a couple of hours to complete. I'm going back to work on it
tomorrow - hoping that VirtualLab will have found the precious data.
And to work on a backup and recovery plan so it doesn't happen again.
Thanks.
Tyler

 

[Diane Ross]

Newbie here. Also not a very experienced Mac user, which may or may
not have contributed to the mess I have helped to create on a "friends"
G4 running OS X 10.3.?. The original problem was that the user was
unable to open his Entourage mail app. When we clicked on it, it came
up with the 'you must rebuild your database file error -40.'

Error -40

Compacting failed. A read/write error has occurred (-40)

Error -40 is a positioning error (tried to position before start of file).
This might indicate file system corruption. Try running Apple's Disk
Utility: First Aid and repairing the disk till it shows clean.

This error is an indication that your friend's computer has serious issues
with his drive.

Of course
neither of the rebuilds worked. I then created a second user on the
machine

You could have just created a new Identity in Entourage.

and was going to copy the original user's Documents folder over
to the new user's Documents folder, but I did it backwards and copied
the brand new, empty folder over his existing Documents folder. IDIOT!
Now I'm attempting to help retrieve the "friends" important files from
his original Documents folder. Are these files recoverable?

Your description is a bit confusing. If you have the original files on
another drive you can use those files to replace the blank new folder. There
is no way to recover files that have been overwritten without serious time
and effort.