Recovering a Trashed File
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Recovering a Trashed File
Sooner or later everyone does it ... you empty your Trash, and suddenly the metallic taste of panic is on your tongue as you realize you just threw away something you desperately need!
The first thing to do is STOP whatever you're doing. Don't save anything else to your hard drive; you may write over the lost file. If you have not shut down your machine since you emptied the trash, try this:
Reboot immediately by pressing [control] [command] and the power key. DON'T use the Shut Down or Restart commands. Macs don't really delete a file until they go through the shutdown process. If you're lucky, when your machine comes back up, you will find your file either still in the trash, or wherever it was before you put it in the trash.
If that doesn't work, or if you've already shut down the machine, use one of the following utilities to recover your data. The sooner you do this, the better your chances.
Norton Utilities
Use "Unerase"
Data Rescue
Shareware; get it at Wildbits
There are other shareware recovery utilities available. The most important thing is to have a recovery utility on hand BEFORE disaster strikes!
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