Accidentally "replaced" our database! Help?

[Heidi]

Hi,

I am new here and hoping someone can help me recover my data. Here's what happened:

An employee who is not very experienced thought she was "opening" a database when she went to the File Menu (from within Filemaker Pro) and chose "New Database" (instead of the next option down which is "Open Database").

The dialogue box that popped up looks just like the "open database" box but really it was the "create new database" box. By default it showed all our existing databases in their little folder.

She double clicked on the one she wanted to open and the dialogue box said "Such-and-such database already exists. Do you want to replace it?" and she clicked YES thereby overwriting the existing database by creating a new empty database with the same name!

I find it hard to believe that a database can be wiped out so easily but it's true: the data is GONE!

Has anyone heard of this happening and know of a solution? Where is my data? Can it be recovered? I already tried the "recover" option but it merely recovered the new empty database.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Also, do you think I should inform Filemaker Inc. about this weak spot? This must have happened to others in the past.

Thank you in advance for your time

~Heidi

[Will]

You must back up your files on at least a daily basis if the data is important. Unless someone else has any ideas I'm afraid your data is gone. One person's weakness is another persons convenience - it's up to you to secure your data or train those you work with to prevent this from happening again.

[stanley]

Heidi:

What an absolute horror story. Unfortunately, nobody at FMI is going to be able to help you, unless you've got a backup somewhere. You don't say if you're running Windows or Mac, but you could try some kind of data recovery program like Norton Utilities, and see if the old file is lurking on your hard drive somewhere. Even then, though, the file will likely be corrupt, would require a fair amount of hacking, just to get a partial set of the data out.

It's a tough lesson to learn the hard way, but now you know: back up your data frequently, and back up to multiple locations.

Another thing you should look into is "opener files", which isolate the end user from direct interaction with the data files, and would prevent the kind of chain of events which zapped you.

-Stanley

[Fenton]

That is awful. I second Stanley's suggestion. STOP using that computer. Search for data-recovery software. On a Mac we have Date Rescue: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/

I'm sure there are others for PC. Someone may be able to at least get some of the data out.

[Heidi]

Thanks so much for your comments guys! I received similar comments on my other post in the Accounts & Privileges section.

There is nothing I can do, the data is gone. I confirmed it with FM,Inc. The tech guy I talked to said he personally had made that same mistake once and kicked himself for it!

Our lesson is: don't assume employees know the basic Windows system (we use Windows, not Mac) and always make daily backups!

I have about 2 1/2 months of data to re-enter and luckily my boss isn't too mad and understands mistakes like this sometimes happen.

I do think though that Windows should have an extra (or stronger) warning when someone is about to over-write a file like that. I wonder how often this mistake happens to others?

Anyway, thanks for the replies, I really appreciate it... and now I know where to come if I have any other questions (or even some answers!) in the future:)

~Heidi

[bruceR]

This is just one of the reasons why multi-user environments should be using FileMaker Server. If these files were hosted with Filemaker Server, properly set up, this would have been impossible because users have no file access to the server.

That is also why some developers use products like SecureFM, they allow complete control of your menus. Also, in later versions of Filemaker, you have the option during install to not allow users to create new files.