[HM] Help - Need to recover a file

[Michael Winter]

On Jul 5, 2006, at 11:10 AM, Glenn Gorham wrote:

> Have accidentally Trashed and Emptied a file I need.

In the past, I've used everything from Norton Utilities, to TechTool  
Pro, to DiskWarrier to recover erased files. I haven't done it in a  
long time, so I'm just guessing that current versions of the programs  
would still to this.

Just so you know how things work, the analogy I use is to compare the  
hard drive to a book. When the computer wants to find a file in "the  
book", it looks in the table of contents to find out where the file  
is written in the book. When you erase a file, it erases the entry in  
the table of contents so the computer can no longer find it using its  
normal method.  But it does not actually erase the page(s) containing  
the file. That only happens if a new file is saved and it happens to  
be saved on the same page that erased file resides on.

To recover an erased file, recovery utilities read through the hard  
drive page by page looking for files and bits of files that don't  
have a corresponding listing in the table of contents. The utility  
will then usually give you a list of what it has found and give you  
the option to "recover" those files.

IMPORTANT: Shut down the computer.

The key to being able to recover an erased file is that no other file  
has written over the page(s) that contained the erased file. OS X  
during normal operation may create "swap files" and defragment files,  
overwriting different parts of the disk. Even downloading an email  
message like this one will overwrite part of the disk where erased  
files may have resided. Your best bet is to immediately shut down the  
computer and restart it using the CD supplied with whichever utility  
you have to recover files. The more you do on the computer before  
recovering the file, the more likely it will be overwritten and lost  
forever.

Good luck.

-Mike