Recover Deleted Trash Files on Mac OS X  Retrieve Mac Files, Undelete & Restore Mac Data

If you have heard that it is not possible to recover deleted Trash Bin files on Macs - it simply isn't true.

You can recover deleted files, photos or data as long as OS X has not re-used the directory and cataloged the information yet.

What this means is that your best chance for completely recovering your deleted files is if you stop using your Mac as soon as you've realized that you have deleted files that you actually need.

Although recovering deleted files can be a hit or miss game on some operating systems (like Windows for example), the HFS+ file system used by the Mac OS X does make some sort of room available to keep accidentally deleted files recoverable.

When you've right clicked on "Empty Trash", what you have actually done is not erased the files themselves but instead the hard drive's directory entries for the files that were in your Mac Trash bin.

The space that the files used to occupy is now free space and available for re-use. The information that included all your files and data is still there and recoverable. Sometimes, if the file you deleted is very small, it might not be overwritten for a while until another equally small-size file is written to the drive.

However, this "free space" will be overwritten by your Mac computer eventually. When that happens depends really on a lot of things, such as how this free space is distributed over the hard drive etc....

This is why it is imperative that you act quickly if you want to successfully and completely recover your deleted Mac files.

Sometimes that available space on your Mac will be overwritten immediately with new data, other times this may take days, weeks or months...it all depends on your personal situation. The most important thing is this:

Your best chance of recovering a file deleted from Trash Bin intact is to stop using your Mac immediately.

If you continue using your Mac computer, every hour that goes by, you significantly increase the risk that the files you want to recover will be lost forever and overwritten. It doesn't matter if the data is an email, a photo or a Word or Excel spreadsheet - the same principle applies.

This is especially true if you are currently running low on disk space. The Mac OS X overwrites this little free space very quickly with temp files. If you want to recover files from the Trash - stop using your Mac right now.

If you've done that, good. Your next step to recover deleted Trash files is to get your hands on a good Mac data recovery tool. 2 excellent ones are Data Rescue 3 and Stellar Mac Data Recovery - (free trial).

Below is a presentation of how these tools work to retrieve your deleted Mac files. Follow the same steps below and you should be able to recover most accidentally deleted data, files, pictures or emails.

# STEP 1:

Install the Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery software (free trial) and then from the displayed list of options, select the "Fresh Recovery" option.

# STEP 2:

Here you will see all the separate sections of your Mac computer from which this program is able to recover files and general data. You want to choose the appropriate section which best describes your situation. For example, if you would like to get back deleted photos or pictures - choose the Recover Photos option. If you want to recover a music file - select the "Music or Video Files" and so on.

If you have deleted Trash Bin files and selected "Empty Trash", you will need to choose the option "Recover Hard Drive". Pretty easy so far...

# STEP 3:

Next you will be given four different options. Again, if you want to retrieve deleted files from your Trash bin, click on the the Trash image, so choose "Deleted File Recovery".

# STEP 4:

Finally, you will see a list of all hard drive volumes, select the volume on which you want to perform deleted file recovery and press "Continue".

# STEP 5:

After the scan is finished, the program will display ALL the files or photos that it was able to recover. If it finds your files, folders, emails or photos - congratulations!

All you have to do now is choose the files you want to recover, click on them and save them to a safe location. Now that your important stuff is back and on a safe place and you can get back to doing what you really want to be doing!

Data Rescue 3 is a similar program that professional data recovery services. So if you go take your Mac to a professional hard drive repair store, most likely they will use similar software to this. It also allows for Mac email and photo recovery.

To use this utility correctly, you need to save your recovered files to either an internal or external hard drive (USB or FireWire), removable media device (such as a Zip or MO) or a networked drive. This is the key point to DR3. It analyzes your entire hard drive looking for your data, then it re-assembles your files and stores them to a different location.

In case you need it, you will also get an emergency bootable DVD. What ever your situation, try the free demo first to find out if your files can be recovered from your Mac. Only once you know this for sure (i.e that your data is recoverable), should you continue and purchase the program.

Try either Data Rescue 3 or Stellar Data Recovery to see if you can recover your accidentally deleted files.

Both Data Rescue 3 and Stellar Phoenix will scan your Mac hard-drive for deleted files and data from your Trash. They will analyze and preview a list of recoverable files and folders that you can recover. ONLY once you see that your lost files are recoverable, proceed to complete your deleted file recovery.

Once you've decided on a Mac data recovery program to use, the process of scanning your hard drive for your lost file or files is pretty simple. It will vary depending on which Mac file recovery utility you are using, but it's basically the same.

Select the hard-drive or folder where you missing file was and start the scan. Once complete, you'll see a large list of file names. You're just looking for the file type and name that matches what you've lost.

Once you find your file, save it to a secure location.

Still can't retrieve or find you missing files?

Try again with a different recovery app.

As said above, Data Rescue III and Stellar Mac Recovery are your best options.

Mac File Recovery

Files are stored on the hard drive at specific locations, and those locations are stored in the file allocation table. When you erase a file, the entry in the allocation table is removed, and the OS now thinks that the space where the file used to be is "free" space - but in actual fact the data is still there.

The problem is that if you save anything on the hard drive, OS X could use that space & overwrite the file or the photos which you want back.

You might have had a chance to retrieve deleted files or deleted photos if you do it immediately, but the longer you leave it, the harder it gets for successful recovery.

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