Recover audio files on a Macbook Pro

The disk space is almost full on my Macbook so I used a data cleaning app to free up the disk. Unfortunately, it wrongly deleted a lot of files in tmp folder. I noticed there are a few files associated with one of my projects. I need some advice to restore those audio files.

Before doing anything else, stop using that drive. Files on unix-based systems are (often) deleted by removing metadata about the file space; the actual file contents are still there, but the OS treats the space used as available for other stuff.

If you keep using the drive then there’s increased chance those files will be over-written and become unrecoverable.

Before doing anything else, stop using that drive. Files on unix-based systems are (often) deleted by removing metadata about the file space; the actual file contents are still there, but the OS treats the space used as available for other stuff.

If you keep using the drive then there’s increased chance those files will be over-written and become unrecoverable.

Thanks for the advice. So is it possible to recover the files, right?

Possible. I don’t know enough about macs to say exactly what to do. (I’ve f*cked up and had to recover files on assorted linux and Windows boxen. Far far worse on Windows. But possible.)

You’ll have to Google around for some software. Generally the idea is to boot something up (such as a second machine, or boot from a CD) so that the recovery tool can look for files to recovery while not inadvertently ruining them.

Here’s a tool:https://www.cleverfiles.com/recover-deleted-files-mac.html

I have no experience with it.

here is some relevant discussion: https://forum.renoise.com/t/disc-recovery-renoise-files-lost-help/47352

Files are not completely gone when deleted, to safe the time of having to overwrite everything the OS will just mark the space the files were as free for further use, it will only delete the records that were pointing to the files, not the actual data. But it may then happily overwrite the data. While all parts of a file are still intact, chances are good that some software can reconstruct the files.

If the files were deleted and cannot be retrieved from trash bin or whatever, you’ll need special software, luckily there is some available for free (“testdisc” / “photorec”).

You have to stop using the operating system/hard disk the relevant data was on, and somehow make a 1:1 byte copy of the partition with the missing data. If you have it safe, you can continue using the system. You can either get out the hard disk and copy the partition in another computer with enough disk space, or use a live OS stick and some large usb hdd, whatever.

On this image you can run the recovery software and try to find your files.

There might be software that you just install on your running system and try to recover data from within. I would not recommend it though, any further running of the disk mounted to the OS, especially if it is the system partition, will risk further data loss that cannot be recovered. The disk being full makes it even more dramatic, the os will constantly look for free space somewhere to work with, and the space the deleted files still have their shaddows dwelling will be a welcome option for it to overwrite. Also the recovery process will need a lot of disk space, it will have to unpack the whole volume of files somewhere, so you can look at what you’ve got and try to find your files within.

The disk space is almost full on my Macbook so I used a data cleaning app to free up the disk. Unfortunately, it wrongly deleted a lot of files in tmp folder. I noticed there are a few files associated with one of my projects. I need some advice to restore those audio files.

there are lot of data recovery software online for you to choose, such as umacsoft data recovery, mackeeper, tunesbro data recovery mac, stellar pheonix data recovery and so forth, almost of them have trial version, so you can download the free version and to see if you can scan the your audio files.may my advice could help you out!

Helping yourself is nice!

In case anyone finds this thread: Either remove the HDD from the macbook and connect it to another mac thru a usb-sata adapter. If that is not possible, do a 1:1 copy of a recent macOS from another mac using CarbonCopyCloner to a HFS+ / GPT formatted HDD. Now hold down option while powering up, select the usb drive to boot. Now access the internal drive with one of such recovery tools e.g. “Data Rescue”.

As written, it is most important you don’t use the drive with lost files at all anymore, not even booting it.

For much more comfort in the future, I recommend to do your HDD backups with Carbon Copy Cloner always, because CCC backups are bootable.

Don’t use MacKeeper software. It is known as being trojan software.

If your drive already is converted to APFS, well then bad luck. I don’t think there are filesystem-level recovery tools out till now, supporting APFS. Better stay with HFS+ until this will change.

Helping yourself is nice!

In case anyone finds this thread: Either remove the HDD from the macbook and connect it to another mac thru a usb-sata adapter. If that is not possible, do a 1:1 copy of a recent macOS from another mac using CarbonCopyCloner to a HFS+ / GPT formatted HDD. Now hold down option while powering up, select the usb drive to boot. Now access the internal drive with one of such recovery tools e.g. “Data Rescue”.

As written, it is most important you don’t use the drive with lost files at all anymore, not even booting it.

For much more comfort in the future, I recommend to do your HDD backups with Carbon Copy Cloner always, because CCC backups are bootable.

Don’t use MacKeeper software. It is known as being trojan software.

If your drive already is converted to APFS, well then bad luck. I don’t think there are filesystem-level recovery tools out till now, supporting APFS. Better stay with HFS+ until this will change.

Thanks. I will ask a tech man to do it for me.