A folder was deleted in a weird way, I think...

[macswitcha2]

I plugged my external drive into another mac to transfer a folder from one of the partitions to create space. What I did was take the folder and place it in my dock. I believe what I did next, I can't remember, is trash the folder that was in the partition. I then emptied the trash.


I noticed that the folder I placed on my dock had a question mark signed. I was like " OHH NO!."

I tried to savage the files via FileSavage and I don't believe it was recovered. However, there are a lot of zip files that I haven't checked.

The folder has over 20 gigs of video.

I remember that I made a clone of the drive that I made the partition for so I mounted it and no luck. The folder is not there. I must of cloned it afterwards.

I think I'm out of luck since I also deleted the partition.

Is there any other way I can recover these files? Could I be doing something wrong other than the wrong I have already done?

[simsaladimbamba]

The Dock is not an actual place to store files or folders, it is for placing shortcuts to applications, files and folders, meaning if you drag something to the Dock, it will not be copied somewhere but stay in the place you drag it from, therefore giving you only faster access to the actual file or folder via the Dock.


Read the following to learn more about Mac OS X and navigating it: Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios

If you have dragged the folder only to your Dock and then deleted the folder via Finder and emptied the Trash, then the data is gone.
You might try DataRescue or FileSalvage or the free beta of Disk Drill to recover your data, but if you have already overwritten the files due to copying new data onto the external HDD, the recovery will be impossible. But you can try with Disk Drill and see if you are able to recover something.