How to Recover Your Deleted Mac Files
Posted by admin on February 12th, 2013Switching from Windows to Mac benefits users in many ways and one of the biggest advantages is less virus contamination and reduced file system corruption. Though virus infection and file system corruption play a big role in data loss faced by any computer user, they are not the only reason. Accidental deletion of a file while cleaning up cluttered desktop or hard drive and clearing the ‘Trash’ without viewing its contents are some other reasons that cause Mac data loss.
Therefore, to overcome data loss occurred due to any reason, it is recommended to maintain the backup of your valuable files. However, if you do not have latest backup of your data, then too you should not worry as there are professional Mac file recovery tools. These tools are efficient enough for recovering your lost, deleted, and formatted files. However, you may think that how? How a file recovery tool for Mac can recover all the files that are not present?
Well, this is the biggest misconception of most of the computer users that deleted file (here file is representing both data and folder) are lost from their computer’s hard drive for ever. Deletion not exactly deletes a file instead it removes the entry of the file in the index table, maintained by the file system. The index entry is used by the Operating System (OS) to access the file hence its deletion makes the file unavailable. On the other hand, the deleted file remains at its original location physically intact.
However, due to the unavailability of the indexes of deleted files, the OS marks the space occupied by them as free to use. Therefore, if you save a new file on your affected hard drive, then it is quite possible that the OS saves it at the location of the deleted file and overwrites it. This clearly indicates that the index file is the only reason that misleads your OS about the deleted file. Therefore, if you use a software that bypasses the index entry and accesses data directly from the hard drive, then you can definitely recover deleted files. And, this is what a Mac file recovery tool does.
It leaves the index entries and accesses all the data on the hard drive that does not have index. During recovery with file recovery tool, you may also find that you get some months or even years of lost file. This is because these files are not overwritten till day; however, the chances of recovery of very old files are very less. Therefore, if you have lost some of your precious files, then Mac file recovery software would be a better option for you. But to perform successful recovery, it is suggested to stop using your affected hard drive until the recovery software done with its job.