How can I recover deleted files on my Mac?

You may be looking for Data Rescue 2…

But backups are really the best solution.

Is the disk the only disk or can you boot from another one with access the disk with the lost files. Macs offer more possibility if you aren’t working from the boot-up disk.

I can’t back up the data that’s been deleted because I don’t own a time machine. :)

I can boot from another disk.

I’ll check out Data Rescue 2. Any other recommendations? Is that the best? Would DiskWarrior help me?

I would give Data Rescue 2 a try. The demo will let you know if the files can still be recovered. And if you have another drive to boot from I would do that ASAP. Every second using this drive is another opportunity for your file to be written over.

Data Rescue 2’s website, prosofteng.com, is down. I’m going with Stellar Phoenix. Fingers crossed. Thanks for the help. Other suggestions are welcome.

DiskWarrior is amazing at rebuilding corrupted directories, but it will do nothing to help with deleted files.

Well, from experience I must say that if you somehow “accidentally” emptied your trashcan while trying to drag out your accidentally trashed files, then there isn’t much of a chance, because you’ve probably securely emptied it.

Yeah, good point. If you “Secure Empty Trash”, than there’s a good chance you’ll never see them again.

I’m not sure why an accidental deletion would be more likely to be a secure deletion. In any case, the deletion was, in this case, not by choosing “Secure Empty Trash…”

Time Machine? SuperDuper? Carbon Copy Cloner? rsync?

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In other words, I guess a restore from backup isn’t an option? Oh, read your later quip. Guess not.

Well, now’s a good time to start!

Thanks for the recommendations. I tried Stellar Phoenix, which was OK but nothing special. If I had to do it over again I’d use Data Rescue II.

Normally, I back up my stuff with SuperDuper + Dropbox, which I highly recommend. In this case some project files were backed up, but the backup copies were outdated, so undeleting was a preferable option (though it didn’t work well enough to be useful).