It looks like some early adopters of Apple's latest operating system ( OS X 10.6 ), dubbed Snow Leopard, have experienced a data loss surprise that was, in most cases, entirely unexpected.

The bug, which affects some users, can cause the loss of important user created data in the following scenario:

• A user logs into the Guest account
• The user then logs out at the end of the session
• The regular user account, normally the primary account is entered
• User data is lost, in many cases leaving the account completely free of user created data, in some cases causing the account to appear like a newly created account.

The bug is still unconfirmed by Apple, however, the cases reported on Apple's own support discussion boards are still growing.  It seems, and this is purely speculation on our part, that the default action for data erasure of the Guest account, something that happens each time the Guest user logs out, incorrectly identifies both the Guest account and the primary user account as requiring deletion.

abc are advising the public to stop using or even disable their Guest account if it is currently active on their Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard computers to prevent the risk of data loss.  This bug will not affect users who do not use or allow to be used the Guest account.  abc Data Recovery offer Mac Data Recovery services to help relieve this situation, please see below.

abc Data Recovery's technical team have been been reporting that trials of the developer 10.6.2 beta (a pre-release software offered to developers) seem to have rectified the bug, however, please be aware that as this software is beta it is impossible to determine whether or not the final release will have solved the issue.

If this article has found you too late and you require your data back, we recommend you power the computer down and contact abc Data Recovery Ltd on 0845 2002 845 or by using the contact form.  We will happily provide you with a free, no obligation quotation for the recovery of your lost data.  In most cases abc can recover the majority, if not all of your lost data due to this bug.