RescueNotify is a System 7-only application which looks for a “Rescued Items” folder in your Trash. If it finds such a folder, it will display a message. If no such folder exists, the application exits quietly. Place this application into your “Startup Items” folder to automatically check for “Rescued Items” each time you start your Mac.
Background
----------
System 7-savvy applications are supposed to create temporary “scratch” files inside an invisible folder called “Temporary Items” on your boot disk. When the files are no longer needed, the application is supposed to delete them. When booting, the Mac will check to see if the “Temporary Items” folder is empty or not. If it contains files, they are moved into a folder called “Rescued items from …” in the Trash.
The idea is that the only time there should be anything in the “Temporary Items” folder at boot time is if your Mac crashed. In such a case, you *might* be able to salvage some data from these “scratch” files.
The problem is that the only notification you get that something was “rescued” is a bulging trash can icon. If you often leave things in your trash and are used to a bulging trash can you may not even notice. Furthermore, novice users might not know about this “feature”.
Operation
---------
By placing RescueNotify in your “Startup Items” folder, it will check for a “Rescued Items” folder in your trash each time you start your Mac. The vast majority of times the folder will not be there and RescueNotify will exit quietly. If a rescue folder is found, RescueNotify will display a message reminding you to check the folder if you need to try and recover some data.
Trying it out with “Test-MakeTempFile”
------------------------------------
Since RescueNotify does nothing unless a “Rescued Items” folder exists in your trash, most of the it will do nothing! If you want to see RescueNotify in action, you will need to leave a file in the invisible “Temporary Items” folder when you boot the Mac.
Since it is not a good idea to force an application to crash just to leave a temporary folder behind, I have included a small application called “Test-MakeTempFile”. This program creates a small file in the “Temporary Items” folder on your boot disk. Rebooting your Mac will cause the System to move this file into the “Rescued Items” folder in your Trash. Assuming you have installed RescueNotify into the “Startup Items” folder you should get a message informing you that the rescue folder exists. Empty the trash, reboot, and RescueNotify should be silent again.
What to do with “Rescued Items”
-----------------------------
So, now that RescueNotify tells you that some files have been “rescued”, what do you do with them? This depends a great deal on the application you are using and what (if anything) it stores in its temporary files. Some application store recent changes in their temp files and in the case of a crash, you may be able to recover some data from them. Other applications either store meaningless data in the temp file, or don't use them at all.
It is not a good idea to rely on recovering data from the “Rescued Items” folder. In my experience, in the dozen or so times I have found rescued items in the trash, not once have I been able to recover anything from them. A much better technique is to save often and to use the “Make Backup” features found in many applications.
Nevertheless, since Apple went through the trouble of adding the “Rescued Items” feature into System 7, I wanted to know when something was recovered. Spotting a bulging trash can was not enough notification, so I wrote RescueNotify.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, let me know at one of the E-Mail addresses below.
Distribution
-----------
RescueNotify is "freeware". You may make and distribute copies of RescueNotify, provided that you include this documentation. However, you may not sell or distribute RescueNotify for profit, nor include it with other software which is sold or distributed for profit, without my written consent.
