[pendragon]

It is my "understanding" that OS X over-writes the files immediately when they are deleted. So unless one has a special program (such as Data Recycler) installed prior to the delete, or calls in NSA or the like, the files cannot be recovered.

But, I have no real source of my "understanding", so I truly do not know if I am correct, sorta but not exactly correct, have been listening to idiots, or the ravages of time have (finally) taken their toll on my synapses.

Any enlightenment most appreciated.

[ntsc]

When a file is deleted in Mac OS X and indeed any Mac OS or, i believe even Windown (tho i'm not 100% sure!) the file system simply forgets where it put that file on the disk. This means that the file itself is still there just the system isn't able to find it. In theory a program such as Norton Utilities could recover the file assuming one thing - that no new data has been written over it. Since the system doesn't know that the file is there and as far as its concerned it isn't it could write new data to the place in the disk where the file once resided. This would cause the permanent deletion of the file and it would be unrecoverable at this point.

So in short with the proper program it is possible to recover a file but it is best to use the disk as little as possible and avoid writing *anything* to disk as this could render the file unrecoverable.