Undelete Tool For Mac

This is the best recovery tool that can help the users to recover their lost data from FAT volume on Mac. This application allows a easy recovery of files from a FAT partition, which was either deleted or formatted.

Undelete Program For Mac
Undelete Tool For Mac

Updated: July 24, 2019 Home » Freeware and Software Reviews » Data Recovery, Backup And Cloud Storage

How to recover files and data from a dropped SSD hard drive? Which is the best external hard drive and Android Smartphone microSD card data recovery software? Are there any good free damaged dropped hard drive data recovery tools? How much to fix broken, bad sector, dead and crashed hard disk or laptop hard drive data?

Alternative Article ➤ 7 Best iOS Data Recovery Software For Apple iPhone And iPad

Your hard drive or hard disk crashed, what do you do now? Send it to a specialist shop and it is going to cost you a bomb to retrieve, save, recover and extract all your data, or forget about it? Have you ever wonder how was the computer expert able to extract the lost data and files? They use specialize software, while these freeware have the basic covered, it is still no match to those professional grade data recovery software. If you are seeking professional help, Seagate Rosewood and Western Digital both have their own professional data recovery service. Check out their official website for more information.

For those with Seagate Hard Disk
For those with Western Digital Hard Disk (Global, including India)
For those with Toshiba Hard Disk (Europe)

↓ 01 – Recuva Data Disc Recovery | Free / Paid | Windows

Recuva Freeware is a free hard drive recovery software made available by Piriform, it can efficiently scan and recover data from crashed hard disk data in FAT and NTFS format. Besides standard hard disk file recovery data, Recuva can also. Accidentally deleted an important file? Lost files after a computer crash? No problem – Recuva recovers files from your Windows computer, recycle bin, digital camera card, or MP3 player!

Superior file recovery – Recuva can recover pictures, music, documents, videos, emails or any other file type you’ve lost. And it can recover from any rewriteable media you have: memory cards, external hard drives, USB sticks and more!
Recovery from damaged disks – Unlike most file recovery tools, Recuva can recover files from damaged or newly formatted drives. Greater flexibility means greater chance of recovery.
Deep scan for buried files – For those hard to find files, Recuva has an advanced deep scan mode that scours your drives to find any traces of files you have deleted.

↓ 02 – TestDisk [ Partition Recovery ] | Open Source | Windows | macOS | Linux

TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software: certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy. TestDisk can:

Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
Fix FAT tables
Rebuild NTFS boot sector
Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
Fix MFT using MFT mirror
Locate ext2/ext3/ext4 Backup SuperBlock
Undelete files from FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
Copy files from deleted FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions.

↓ 03 – Disk Drill Basic | Free / Paid | macOS

Do you need to recover deleted files in Mac OS X, such as critical business documents, music, photos or videos? Have files or whole partitions gone missing from your Mac? Are you having trouble accessing an external USB drive or camera card? We can help. We make data recovery for Mac OS X easy. Disk Drill makes data recovery in Mac OS X super easy. With just one click of a button, it will run through all of its scanning functions and display a list of files that can be potentially recovered.

You can even preview these files so that you can determine which ones can be successfully recovered. If you have Disk Drill’s data protection features enabled, some methods of file recovery on your Mac are free! If not, a quick upgrade will enable you to recover your files and get back to work. Deep Scan method can be used in any situation and is able to recognize and recover over 80 different file types.

The Basic version is free. It gives you all the functions of data protection and scanning, so that you can see which files can be found and preview them to verify that they are recoverable. But you must upgrade your license to actually recover any files found

Photo files like JPG, PNG and TIFF
Graphic files like AI, PSD and INDD
RAW camera files like CR2, NEF and DNG
Video files like AVI, DV and MP4
Music files like AIF, MP3 and WAV
Recover corrupted Jpeg photo from Android smartphone’s microSD card
Document files like DOCX, PPTX and XLSX

↓ 04 – EaseUS Data Recovery Free | Free / Paid | Windows | macOS

Free file recovery software can help users to recover lost/deleted files from Windows and Mac-based hard drives, external hard drives, digital cameras, MP3/MP4 players, and other devices. With the intuitive interface and the 3-step process “Scan – Preview – Recovery”, it easily retrieves photos, videos, music and other files lost by accidental deleting, formatting, virus infection, or improper operation. EaseUS Data Recovery Free for Mac allows users to freely recover 2GB of data.

You can recover 2GB Data
Recovers many types of files, including images, videos, documents, email, archive, etc.
Supports the recovery of data from multiple storage devices like external drives, USB drives, SD cards, memory cards, and others.
Supports Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.8 (Mountain Lion), 10.7 (Lion), 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

↓ 05 – MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free | Free / Paid | Windows | macOS

Best data recovery program for home users to recover data from different data loss crisis. MiniTool Mac Data Recovery Personal License can recover photos, music, videos, emails, documents, and other types of data from Windows or Mac computer or other storage devices. This data recovery software is fast, safe and easy to use. It has data preview effect, so Mac users can enjoy the charm of data recovery in advance. Four powerful recovery functional modules:

Undelete Recovery: helps Mac users quickly recover data lost due to accidental deletion from storage devices.
Damaged Partition Recovery: recovers lost data from existing partitions, such as damaged partition, formatted partition and the partition with a RAW file system or the partition which is notified by Mac: “Do you want to format it?”.
Lost Partition Recovery: recovers lost data from lost or deleted partition.
Digital Media Recovery: recovers photos, audios, videos and other multimedia files from portable storage devices, such as memory card, memory stick and USB flash drive.

↓ 06 – UndeleteMyFiles Pro | Free | Windows | macOS

UndeleteMyFiles Pro is a free profesional tool to recover accidentally deleted files from hard disks, USB flash drives, CF and SD cards and other storage media. UndeleteMyFiles is a quick and easy way to find and recover deleted media and digital devices.It employs a simplified two-step process that enables you recover any files that used to reside on your system.

File Rescue Wizard – a quick and easy way to find and recover deleted files.
Media Recover – Recover media files in a couple of easy steps.
Deleted File Search – Specialized filters that allow you to find specific deleted information.
Files Wiper – Allows you to delete any files permanently without any chances of recovery.
Mail Rescue – Mail Recovery Wizard.

↓ 07 – Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition | Free | Windows

With a series of easy-to-use utilities on Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition Recovery CD, you can recover your data even if file deleted, partition formatted, you can repair your Windows even if Windows crashed, you can reset your windows login password even if you forgot it. With Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition, just three steps to recover your data, repair Windows system or reset Windows password. It is easy as 1, 2, 3.

Lazesoft Windows Recovery – Windows System Recovery, Fix Windows boot problems
Lazesoft Data Recovery – recover data from deleted, formatted, damaged disk/drive/partition
Lazesoft Recover My Password – Windows Password Recovery
Lazesoft Disk Image & Clone – Disk Backup, Clone and Partition Manager

↓ 08 – FreeUndelete | Free / Paid | Windows | macOS

FreeUndelete restores deleted files, including those removed from Windows Recycle Bin. In case of accidental removal of files on a NTFS (1.0 and 2.0) (default for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and NT), FAT32, FAT16 or FAT12 file systems this is the utility to help. Supported file systems includes NTFS 1.0, NTFS 2.0, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. The recovered files are saved into a new user-selected location to prevent overwriting the deleted files on the original media.

↓ 09 – Wise Data Recovery | Free | Windows

Wise Data Recovery is a free data recovery program to get back deleted photos, documents, videos, emails etc. from your local or removable drives for free. Wise Data Recovery is a free data recovery software to solve your data loss problems Whether you deleted some files by accident, formatted a drive or encountered a system crash and lost some files, It can get back lost files from hard drive, external hard drive, USB drive, Memory card, digital camera, mobile phone, MP3 player and other storage media.

Wise Data Recovery supports to recover data from FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32), exFAT and NTFS disk. With advanced algorithm, Wise Data Recovery is able to finish the scanning process in seconds, saving you a lot of time. You can also choose your recovery file types or type in keywords before scanning to narrow down searching results and save more time.

↓ 10 – Eassos Recovery Free | Free | Windows

Free Data Recovery Software, easily recovery deleted, formatted, or lost data. Eassos Recovery Free is capable and free recovery software, which can easily and quickly get back deleted, formatted or lost data from hard disks, USB drives, memory cards and other storage devices. Multiple recovery modes help precisely perform file recovery & partition recovery with high recovery rate.

Retrieve deleted or lost files from hard drive and removable devices.
Recover formatted, RAW, corrupted, damaged and lost partitions.

↓ 11 – Undelete 360 | Free | Windows

Restore files accidentally deleted from your Computer, Recycle Bin, digital camera, flash drive. Undelete 360 is one of the best programs to use for restoring accidentally or unintentionally deleted files from your computer, regardless of storage medium. Using Undelete 360, you can restore files from SSD Hard drives, Digital cameras, Floppy drives or USB flash drives.

Built on a very fast and efficient algorithm, the program will browse, search, and recover files that have been deleted as a result of an accident, a virus, or software and computer failures. Undelete 360 can recover files deleted from computer hard drives, USB/thumb drives and memory sticks, the memory cards used in cameras, smart phones, and other devices, pen drives, and more. The program supports both file recovery and folder recovery.

Accidentally deleted from your PC or other media
Deleted by viruses
Too large to fit in the recycle bin
Deleted on Windows network shares
Deleted from a USB Memory Stick
Deleted when you press “Shift+Delete” keys
Erased when the Move or Cut command has been used
Created and deleted by certain applications
Deleted from the command line

↓ 12 – Stellar Data Recovery | Free / Paid | Windows | macOS

Try out the Stellar Data Recovery Free software to recover lost or deleted documents, email data files, videos, photos, and audio files. The software recovers data from all types of storage devices including hard drives, pen drives, memory cards, etc. Retrieves lost photos, videos, documents, emails, compressed folders, audios, and several hundred other file formats from any Windows PC or Laptop. The free recovery software can recover deleted files and data from a formatted or severely corrupt drive in 3-easy steps.

Permanent Data Deletion – Recovers data lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the Recycle Bin.
Missing or Lost Partition – Recovers data from missing and deleted partitions—lost due to drive corruption or accidental deletion.
Hard Drive Corruption – Recovers data lost from corrupt and RAW drives due to reasons like improper use, power failure, malware attack, etc.
Virus Attack Recovery – Recovers lost, deleted, and hidden data from malware or virus-infected storage media and Windows systems in 3-simple steps
OS Crash Recovery – Recovers data from the unbootable system and corrupt drives after Windows crash and Blue Screen of death (BSOD)
RAW Partition Recovery – Recovers data lost from corrupt hard drive partitions that turn RAW due to virus and malware attacks, unsafe drive removal, and system crash

↓ 13 – SoftPerfect File Recovery | Free | Windows

SoftPerfect File Recovery is a free and useful tool for restoring files and rescuing data that was accidentally deleted from hard disks, floppy disks, USB flash drives, CF and SD cards and other storage media. It supports the popular file systems such as FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS and NTFS5 with compression and encryption. If some important files disappeared and you can’t find them in the recycle bin, don’t panic yet. Try SoftPerfect File Recovery software and see if you can bring the lost files back to life. It is very easy to use, and no installation is required.

Lightweight and free.
Works with FAT and NTFS.
Supports compressed and encrypted volumes.
Recognizes most storage media.
Runs on anything from Windows XP through Windows 10.
Portable software, no installation required.

↓ 14 – Glary Undelete | Free | Windows

Glary Undelete is a free and easy-to-use yet powerful file undelete solution for FAT and NTFS file systems. It will bring back files emptied from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. It will even recover files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

Glary Undelete supports multiple file system ie NTFS + EFS, FAT , NTFS . Moreover, it is able to recover files that the user has compressed or fragmented or even encrypted on NTFS file system.

Supports FAT, NTFS, NTFS + EFS file systems.
Supports recover compressed, fragmented and encrypted files on NTFS.
Undelete files on removable devices.
Filter by file name, file date, size, recovery state.
Supports analyzes recovery possibilities.

↓ 15 – Softtote Free Data Recovery | Free | macOS

With Softtote Mac Data Recovery Freeware you can recover the common bmp, jpg, png, tif, mp3 files from Mac-based internal/external hard drive and perform data recovery like undeleting accidentally deleted files from HFS+, FAT, NTFS, and ext2 file systems.

Unlike other free data recovery software, there is no size limitation for recovering such as only 1GB of data can be recovered, which means users can recover the lost data back no matter how large it is. What’s more, it also possesses ability to preview found files and enables users to select target files to recover.

↓ 16 – DMDE Free | Free / Paid | Windows | macOS | Linux

DMDE is a powerful software for data searching, editing, and recovery on disks. It may recover directory structure and files in some complicated cases through the use of special algorithms when other software can’t help. The software is listed, reviewed, and awarded in magazines and catalogs.

DMDE has a number of freeware features such as disk editor, simple partition manager (e.g. allows partition undeleting), a tool to create disk images and clones, RAID constructor, file recovery from the current panel. Paid editions support file and directory recovery without the restriction, DMDE Professional Edition has additional features to recover data for clients.

↓ 17 – DiskDigger | Free / Paid | Windows | Linux (100% Free)

DiskDigger is a tool that undeletes and recovers lost files from your hard drive, memory cards, USB flash drives — you name it! Whether you accidentally deleted some documents or photos from your computer, reformatted your camera’s memory card, or want to see what files are lurking on an old USB drive, DiskDigger is here for you.

When using it in Windows, DiskDigger is free for downloading, scanning your disk, and previewing any recoverable files. However, when saving the recoverable files, the program strongly encourages you to purchase a personal license. To use the program for commercial purposes, you must purchase a commercial license. (When using DiskDigger in Linux, it’s completely free.)

“Dig Deep” mode has been enhanced with an option to show either “Deleted files only” (which was the previous default behavior) or “Deleted and existing files.” This is useful when the disk is improperly formatted or partitioned (or if the partition area is damaged), but the file system itself is still healthy. When you insert the disk and Windows shows an error such as “You need to format the disk before you can use it,” it’s an indication of this kind of issue. DiskDigger will now let you recover all the files from such a disk, whether or not they were actually deleted within the file system.
In “Dig Deep” mode, there is now improved support for scanning certain file systems that are not native to Windows, including HFS+ (used in macOS disks) and ext4 (used in Linux).
Enhanced support for scanning optical disks (CDs and DVDs) and the file systems that they contain, including ISO 9660 and UDF. There is also improved support for scanning damaged or improperly-burned disks: When selecting the drive to scan, you can go to the Advanced tab and check the “Detect disk size manually” box, which will make DiskDigger ignore the size of the disk as reported by the driver, and instead read the disk explicitly until it can no longer be read.

↓ 18 – iCare Data Recovery | Free / Paid | Windows | macOS

iCare Data Recovery Free – 100% freeware. Recovering deleted data from various kinds of digital devices in just a few seconds. iCare Data Recovery Free can recover permanently deleted/erased files from Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP. It can recover most often used files like word/documents, emails, videos, even audio files from PC hard drive or external usb disk, memory card/usb drive, etc.

Recover files after format/virus attack/ inaccessible digital device; Raw file system or drive shows 0 bytes; chkdsk reports raw drive; Disk/drive/card reports not formatted; Deep Scan Recovery – scans every possible file on each block on digital devices; Deleted/Lost Partition Recovery.

↓ 19 – Kickass Undelete | Free | Windows

Kickass Undelete is a free, fully featured, file recovery tool for Windows. Accidentally deleted a file? Never fear; the data is probably still on your drive and may be recoverable. Kickass Undelete finds all of the deleted files on your hard drive, flash drive or SD card and allows you to recover them.

↓ 20 – Active@ File Recovery Free | Free / Paid | Windows

Active@ File Recovery for Windows provides the ability to effectively detect and recover files and disks lost due to accidental deletion, disk formatting, virus and other reasons. The Professional package also includes integrated Active@ Disk Editor (or Hex Viewer – a utility for low-level data inspection), Virtual RAID re-constructor, being able to recover damaged RAID disk arrays, and File Organizer needed to re-organize and rename files detected by their signatures.

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Recovers from damaged Microsoft FAT/exFAT/NTFS/ReFS, Apple HFS+, Unix UFS, Linux Ext2/Ext3/Ext4/BtrFS/XFS/JFS file systems
Supports HDD / IDE / SATA / eSATA / SCSI / SSD disks / RAID disk arrays, USB Flash Disks and Memory Cards, External USB drives and USB3 disks
Recovers extra-large, compressed, encrypted and fragmented files on NTFS, just deleted files can be recovered based on NTFS Journal ($LogFile)
Creates and Recovers from Raw (sector-by-sector copy), Raw-Compressed images and disk images created by third parties

↓ 21 – PhotoRec | Open Source | Windows | macOS | Linux

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the file system and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media’s file system has been severely damaged or reformatted.

For more safety, PhotoRec uses read-only access to handle the drive or memory card you are about to recover lost data from. Important: As soon as a picture or file is accidentally deleted, or you discover any missing, do NOT save any more pictures or files to that memory device or hard disk drive; otherwise you may overwrite your lost data. This means that while using PhotoRec, you must not choose to write the recovered files to the same partition they were stored on.

↓ 22 – Puran File Recovery | Free | Windows

Puran File Recovery can be used to recover deleted/lost files/partitions. Files can be recovered from formatted disks too. Almost everything that is detected as a drive by Windows can be scanned irrespective of its file system. Be it Hard Disks, Pen Drives, Memory Cards, Mobile Phones, CDs, DVDs, basically any storage medium.

A very simple interface with an extremely powerful recovery engine. A perfect combination of speed, accuracy and simplicity.
A Quick Scan that lists deleted files in a click and few seconds. It supports FAT12/16/32 and NTFS.
A Deep Scan that can intelligently scan a drive byte by byte resulting in high speed listing of many more deleted and lost files.
A Full Scan that can detect deleted/lost partitions and even recover files from formatted drives. RAW and Physical drives can also be scanned.
Deep/Full Scan not just look for lost file records but also detect different format files based on data patterns.
More than 50 formats/data patterns list expandable to hundreds of formats is included. Hence almost everything can be recovered.

↓ 23 – Exif Untrasher | Free | macOS

Exif Untrasher is a Photo recovery software that will try to locate photos in JPEG format on any kind of storage medium (SD card, CF card, memory stick, Hard Disk, SSD, CF Card…) and save them to your Mac. It won’t succeed in every case, but a lot of people were very relieved to find out that it did a pretty good job for them. And even if it fails, it doesn’t make things worse, as it does not alter the memory card.

To use Exif Untrasher, the camera’s memory card must be mounted as a volume on your Mac. When restoring photos from USB stick or hard drive, this is automatically the case, and when dealing with a memory card you can use your Mac’s card reader, an external reader or connect the camera to the Mac via USB (in case it supports the “Mass Storage Protocol”).

The Correct Way On Backing-up Up Your Files

It is always a good idea to have a portable USB hard disk acting as your backup system, alternatively, cloud storage is getting cheaper and more popular as time goes by. Other than cloud, the many mistake done by the average user is to have 1 copy of the files on a single hard disk. The correct method is to have 2 copies of the identical files on 2 different hard disk.

I personally prefer backing up my files on an external hard disk. For those new to backing up their files, here are 14 Free Folder and File Synchronization For External Hard Drive Backup. If possible, set the software to automatically sync all of your files to an external hard disk. Accidentally deleted or formatted your photo and images in your SD and CF card? How to recover data from SD card? Which is the best SD card data recovery software? Is there any free SD memory card data recovery program? What are the ways to recover lost data from SD card? How to retrieve and restore missing data and photos in SD and CF flash drive? Due to some unforeseen incident, my Canon 450D camera’s SD memory card appears to be corrupted, downloading images is not possible because my computer refuses to recognize the corrupted SD card file format system.

Remember, if the data is important; always seek professional data recovery service if money is not an issue. The chances of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible secondary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally is higher from these data recovery center, this is because they have the incentive to recover as much as they can as they charge for every GB of data recovered.

Recommended for you:

It’s happened to us all: You delete a file, folder or entire disk, then realize you’ve made a mistake. You reach for your backup – and you don’t have a backup. What now?

There are several utilities available to help recover deleted files under Mac OS X. Your chances of success depend on how the file was deleted and what you’ve done since then. Unfortunately you will also lose your original filenames, though some reconstruction is possible.

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Deleting, erasing and partitioning

Undelete Program For Mac

On the Macintosh moving a file to the trash, then Emptying the Trash, deletes the item. When you delete a file or folder you remove the entry for that item from the disk directory. Immediately after deletion the data still remains on the disk where it was but the directory says “that space is vacant.” As long as you don’t write anything new to the disk, recovery is usually straightforward.

If you accidentally delete something you need, if at all possible stop using the affected disk immediately.

Another way to delete a file is to use Apple’s Disk Utility to Erase a drive. By default Disk Utility does a Quick Erase, which just deletes the disk directory and replaces it with a new empty copy. The underlying file structure on the volume is not changed, and any existing data remains in place until it gets overwritten.

Partitioning a disk removes all existing volumes on a device, then creates new ones with new disk directories. However like a Quick Erase, Partitioning doesn’t actually remove underlying data, it just marks the space as available. File recovery is usually possible on re-partitioned drives, though this will require a more thorough scan than with a standard erase.

A Secure Erase – typically a multi-pass process – writes new data to the disk and is deliberately destructive to old data. The utilities described here will not work if a Secure Erase is performed on your disk, recovery will require a forensic data recovery service.

Undeleting files on Mac

All Undelete utilities require use of a separate recovery disk to which are copied recovered files. The recovery disk needs adequate free space for the expected amount of data. A hard disk, flash drive, another Mac in Target Disk Mode, or even an iPod, can be used to store recovered files.

There are a number of utilities available for this task, the two I’ve relied upon most are SubRosaSoft FileSalvage and Prosoft Data Rescue. Both are often worth having around in crisis situations, sometimes a few files will be found by one but not the other.

You are usually given the choice of a different levels of scanning, from Quick Scans for recently erased files, to Full Salvage operations for erased or damaged drives. If you know the kinds of files you are looking for, that can speed things up. It’s usually worth trying the quickest options first, then increase the scan levels as needed if you don’t find what you need.

Recovery programs typically work in two passes, first scanning the drive to see what it can find, then recovering the data. This can take minutes, hours or days depending on the size of the drive, number of files to recover, and condition of the media; a damaged or slow disk can substantially slow down the process.

Scanning the drive takes about the same time with both programs. FileSalvage display the tally of found files in real-time, Data Rescue utilizes a post-scan parsing. The result is typically a huge number of recovered files sorted by file type – Documents, Audio, Movies, Pictures – but no filenames!

It’s nice to get a thousand Microsoft Word documents back, but not very helpful when they’re named D3464.doc, D3465.doc, etc. Similar results happen for all file types: .xls, .pdf, .jpg, .tif, .mov, et.al. We’re really only halfway there…

Recovering lost Mac filenames

Why are filenames lost when recovering data? After a particularly challenging recovery job I posed this question to both ProSoft and SubRosaSoft tech support. Here are the responses I received from each company:

ProSoft: It’s most likely a problem resulting from the reformat which wiped out the old file catalog. A lot depends upon the type of file and the program which created it. Some programs embed metadata (in the case of MP3’s, they are called ID3 tags, in the case of camera images, it’s called EXIF data) which may contain the name of the file, but that does not hold true for each and every file type.

SubRosaSoft: The file names will not be included as they are not actually stored in the file but rather in the system’s catalog/ b-trees. As soon as the file is deleted, the information will be removed and the space recycled and overwritten. FileSalvage will recover your files to the folder of your choice but the specific folders they were in and placement will not be the same.

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This outcome can be anything from a minor inconvenience to a major headache, depending on how many files you have. Other than opening and renaming each file individually, what are the options?

One nice bonus with FileSalvage: after recovering files the program asks if you would like to attempt to rebuild filenames. This yields mixed results but is worth trying; the resulting filenames are not the originals but rather get recreated from data within files that FileSalvage can read. Text and word processing files typically get named with first few words in the file. It’s not perfect, but this feature alone has made FileSalvage the first tool I use for this job.

While filenames are not preserved, metadata within files is preserved. This is a big help for movies, videos and music files. You can import the affected files into iTunes via File –> Add to Library… iTunes will scan the embedded metadata and add the items to your library with correct information, even if the files themselves are generic.