I lost my hard drive and no longer have the original copies of the MP3s I uploaded to the file vault. Now I'm out of space and need to move the MP3s to Dropbox or something else. Is there a way to download from file vault to recapture the MP3s?

Yes -several ways. For Firefox: If you want them on your computer, in the file vault click Preview and then in the browser:

1 click on your site icon/favicon
2 click more information,
3 click media
4 find your song, and Save As

You can also directly download using various programs giving them the vault URL. So the first thing is to make a list of all the songs in notepad.

If you have important stuff on your HD, it's possible to recover the data (assuming it did not get run over by a truck). If you know someone who's comfortable plugging stuff in, it's pretty easy to do. You boot a working system and then plug the "bad drive" as a 2nd, etc drive. Program costs about $50. Takes a few hours. Depending on drive, you might require an adapter for the drive that then plugs into your system via USB.

All depends on the value of the data, otherwise, it's simpler to just trash the drive. But be sure to destroy it (hit it with a hammer) since people can recover data from it.

After opening the File Vault, you can also drag files to either your Dropbox folder or any windows folder.

That's too easy

Never realized you could drag from the vault. Too bad it doesn't work in reverse.

Jack Vermeulen wrote:

Neither did I. I just took a chance and it worked.

Something else you can do that is interesting is you can COPY all of the images in your IMAGE file vault into the copy buffer (select with the mouse all files, press CTRL-C), then go to MS Word and PASTE. You will see all of the images you have in your file vault. It isn't real clean because there are links like the DELETE link that stay around.

You can then save the MS Word file as a back-up of all of your images. I think it also works for MS Excel spreadsheet.

Not sure I understand. All I can get is a copy of the html displayed, not the file contents.

So did you mean just the list or copies of the actual file contents?

When I did it, the file vault images were brought in as Image boxes in MS Word. (or maybe it was Excel, I don't remember) It wasn't just the links, but the actual images.

Please show me a jing video of what you did. The only way I can get images is to click on them (which then shows an image) and then copy. Which I've done a few times, but it's a bit awkward clicking if one has many images. (Also tried in Excel, same result - html only). I have a feeling you clicked on them

John, can you duplicate?

One thing I TRY to do with all pictures, mp3's, etc that we upload to the site, is to download them to a 'pen drive' or 'usb drive' after I save them to my computer. A relatively cheap storage device for such emergencies.

Just recently you can get a USB 2 TB (terrabyte) drive for under $100. You plug it into a USB port and it automagically will backup up your whole system, including any changes you make. Or you can manually copy to it.

It's a terrific system since you never have to remember to do a "backup". I also have Windows do image backups as well as do my own manual copies now and again.

You can't have too many backups

USB solid state drives are also useful for backups and transferring files. But you have to remember to do it

Jack,

I tried to attach to the forums, but it was too large. As the video shows, I didn't click the VIEW button for the photos. Just copied and pasted.

I sent the JING to you by e-mail.

Thanks for the video. You'll be interested in my results since when I saw that indeed you did it the simplest way possible, there's a chance for me

For FF4.0.1 that doesn't work. All I get is a list of the files. I'm also using Office 2003

Now what did work that way was IE 9, but only for the Image button. IE 9 refuses to open the insert/edit link - just hangs - in case that hasn't been reported.

Only difference might be Win7 X64, but that shouldn't make any difference since the apps are all the same.

I accidently got rid of FF 3.whatever, in case you are using that and that means FF4 has a bug

Jack,

Just to test your theory, I updated to Firefox 4.0 and now it doesn't work for me either.

I have been told that the IE 9 problem with the hanging goes away if you go to TOOLS/Compatibility mode and turn it on.

Yup, compat mode works for IE9. I noticed a bunch of others said it made no difference on other issues, so didn't bother.

There are also a few other little differences, but mostly IE9 is much better than IE8.

Thank you to the suggestions on the download. The drop/drag didn't work in my MAC environment (I'm new to MAC and trying to teach an old dog new tricks...) but the original suggestion for FIREFOX worked great! I am a recent MAC convert after the tragic oomedy of errors with my old windows home network system. I lost my laptop hard drive just shortly after my father passed after a 3 year battle with Alzheimer's (I was his primary caregiver). My first thought was no worries, I still have copies of my data on my external hard drive. As it turned out, it had stopped working 4 months earlier and I hadn't noticed it with all of the pressure from Dad. So, I took it to two professional shops which both stated they couldn't recover the data. I did have some files on a jump drive which did help, but the bulk of my data was gone... At that point, I decided to invest in a totally integrated system and purchased a MAC with a TIME MACHINE backup. LOVE IT! But it has been a challenge to change.
Thanks - all,
Susie

Susie Skaggs wrote:

Glad something came out of this.

I wonder though if your drive could be recovered. The following is just for general info in case anyone else runs into this.

My daughter had a "crashed" drive (no boot, no detect) and was told the same thing. I spent about 8 hours and "recovered" not only what was there, but also all the deleted files - she was mainly interested in all her photos. I would have charged $400. Most will not pay that, so what shops do is do a quick simple boot sector "fix", try to reset the directory and stop after that. Indeed, they destroyed some data when they did that to my daughter's drive making it take a lot longer than if they had just left it alone and used the correct tools. IOW, do not let anyone write to the drive, unless you do not care about the data.

And yes 1/2 of her drive was toast, but most people only use 1/2 of a drive

I'm looking for how to download all the images in the file vault. This thread indicates you can drag them to a folder, but that's not working for me. Maybe that's changed since the update? Or have I just got something disabled that won't let me for security reasons?

At this time we do not have a simple way to download the contents of the File Vault. It is one of many improvements we're looking at for the File Vault down the road.

The non-simple way would be to click the Preview button for each item and then save the preview.

Will clicking the preview save it as the same size as saved in the vault or is that a smaller preview?

The preview button in File Vault loads the actual stored image file.