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How to Restore Mac Emptied Trash Bin Files in a Simple Way

Updated on by in Software

We say that the Mac OS X is an operating system that has many advanced features and characteristics, with utility applications that are integrated in many outstanding and creative designs. Moreover, the system has an easy to use interface due to its unique design that allows ordinary users to easily design or edit images, videos, and other multimedia files on their Mac. For these reasons many graphic designers and web designers tend to prefer the use of the powerful Mac OS X over any other operating system, yet there is a downside to having such a unique design.

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When the user accidentally loses photos or other important documents, and they are not familiar with this system, they can feel panicked and think that they have lost them forever. For example, when you’ve just accidentally deleted an important file and then emptied your Mac trash bin.

A Simple Way to Restore Lost Files

Thankfully, it is still possible to restore files after emptying the Mac trash bin, but this is based on whether or not you have the Time Machine running.

There are two options for you to choose from when you are deciding to empty your Mac’s trash bin; normal empty or safe empty.

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Normal Empty Mode for Cleaning the Mac Trash Bin

If you choose the normal empty when cleaning your Mac trash bin, you can still restore the deleted files by using some third-party data recovery software. The normal empty way of emptying the bin only formats the place, or space, where you store your files, and formats it just one time. Formatting only changes one piece of magnetism in the Mac’s system. Most of the files will still remain behind, so the system only considers that the files are gone.

Safe Empty Mode for Cleaning the Mac Trash Bin

The safe empty mode (act with “command” key) way to clean your Mac trash bin is very different from the normal empty choice. You will find that if you choose this way to empty your Mac trash bin, it will take a longer time to complete the task than when you use the normal empty option. This is because the safe empty option will perform the act three times, formatting to the place or space where you store your files. This makes sure that the data chosen will be deleted completely, and will not be recovered. This is very important when deleting private information. Another, more involved example of this is how The United States Department of Homeland Security will run formatting twelve times when they are deleting data or files to ensure the data will not be recovered.

So, if you choose the safe empty mode to clean your Mac’s trash bin and have not backed up the data on your Time Machine (or another backup on other devices or software), then it will be impossible for you to restore the files.

Even if you choose the normal way of emptying the Mac’s trash bin, it is still difficult for you to restore your deleted files. Where older version of Mac OS X have restore apps or tools for these problems, it is seldom that these kinds of tools are seen on newer versions of Mac OS X. Problems with files after data recovery when using these tools of Mac included the fact that the recovered files could not be guaranteed to be returned 100% like what they were before they were deleted.

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Is It Still Possible to Restore Files from an Empty Mac Trash Bin?

This seems a little bit difficult to understand, right? I will explain the above statement in detail for you in this article about deletion and recovery.

Though this is difficult to do, this form of data recovery is still possible to perform. However, the first thing users need to do is stop using their Mac and not perform any other operations on it.

Maybe you think that this does not mean to stop using it, or that you need to search on the internet to find ways to get your files or data back. Is this true?

Actually, no.

As we said, emptying the Mac trash bin is one kind of formatting. Now, let’s take another form of formatting as an example. When you format a hard drive, or empty your trash bin, it seems that all the files are gone and that you can no longer find them. Actually, what the operating system does is only going to delete the cataloging of the file and free up the space of these deleted files so that there is enough space for you to store new files into your hard drive at a later time. At this moment you still have chance to recover these files, no matter if you format your hard drive or delete the files from your hard drive.

One thing you need to pay attention to is that if you put any new files into your hard drive, these new files will now occupy the space of these “deleted files”. This is the so-called “data overwritten” situation. Once this happens you will lose the chance to recover the files, and that is why you need to stop using your Mac, to avoid any new files being put into your Mac.

You need to know that even if you search for things on the Internet some cache data will be written into your Mac’s hard drive, and it may take up the space which was belonged to your deleted data or files.

In this situation, I suggest that you find a reliable data recovery company or website to get a trustworthy data recovery program or software that will help you out, and assist in getting the data back.

Some Notes and Tips You Must Learn

When you delete files, or even if the files are deleted accidentally, you need to stop doing any write/read operation to the partition in which the files were stored before. If the files are deleted from the main partition shut down your Mac immediately, use another computer, and plug in your Mac’s hard drive as an external drive to restore your files. If the files are deleted from the other partition stop any write/read operation and use the software I’ve mentioned in this article to recover the files after restarting the Mac. Make sure that the space of the disk is larger than the deleted files. This will ensure that there is enough space for you to save this recovered data after the data recovery process.

Author: Amy Steele

Amy Steele is a writer for uFly Data Recovery Software for Mac. The software can scan out files from the Mac’s hard drive, or other storage device, and can help users to restore their files.

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