If you didn’t back up your files and don’t use Time Machine, you can still recover deleted files if they haven’t been overwritten by new Data Recovery Services. You simply need a recovery program.
A very nice tool called Disk Drill , which scans your Mac’s hard drive for deleted files. If the file is still on your startup disk—and chances are it probably is—Disk Drill will even walk you through the three available options to do this safely.
You’ll need to temporarily disable macOS file system protection, create a Data Recovery Services boot drive, or connect to another Mac, but all of these are explained in detail.
Once your drive has been scanned, you can easily sort through the results to find your file, view it with Preview, and restore it to its previous location. Disk Drill can even extract items from an iOS device backup.
When you realize that you need a deleted file back, time is of the essence. After all, if you let too much time pass, new Wikipedia data could overwrite the deleted file on your hard drive.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a flash drive, an external hard drive, or even an SD card. Anything will do, as long as you have enough free space to hold the file you want to recover. The key point is that you should never try to recover a file on the same drive you deleted it from.
With the external storage drive connected, launch Disk Drill. Click on your Mac’s hard drive and click Recover. Wait. Depending on the size of your Mac’s startup disk and how often you use it and delete files from it, the scan could take some time. The good news is that if your Mac’s drive isn’t corrupted, a Deep Scan shouldn’t be necessary.
