We have all been there and felt the sinking feeling in our stomach when we realized we emptied the trash with a file we desperately needed.
Here are some simple steps to follow after you’ve mistakenly deleted data from your hard drive.
After you have realized you deleted files by mistake, you need to limit your activity on the hard drive. Even web browsing writes data to the drive, meaning you could be writing over the deleted files you want to get back. It goes without saying that downloading files is definitely a no no.
Many people make the mistake after they have realized they have deleted important files and start searching on the internet for hard drive recovery software and end up downloading and installing it to their hard drive they are trying to recover from.
There are so many options to choose from when looking for data recovery software and many of them don’t work as great as they claim they do. So what ends up happening is you download and try several. Which further reduces the chance of recovery and writing over the files thus making the recovery impossible.
Since I am a support engineer for Prosoft Engineering I talk to customers in this predicament everyday. I assist the customer by walking them through these steps first in order to help them successfully recover their deleted files.
Step 1: I have them change the download location and download the free trial version of mac data recovery software for Mac onto an external hard drive. Then launch the Data Rescue 3 application from the external drive and run it from there to scan the internal hard drive.
Step 2: Once the scan is finished then review the results. From here you can browse through the folders and then mark the folders to be recovered.
Step 3: After seeing the files that you were looking for the free trial will allow for the recovery of 1 file. You can then purchase the full version of Data Rescue 3 and enter the serial number to activate and continue the recovery. If you would like help using Data Rescue 3 or have any questions, you can contact our Support team free of charge.
These initial steps are critical to recovering data after you have lost it.