How do I restore files accidentally deleted by the move operation in finder?

[agro1986]

Hi all! I’m using Mavericks

Suppose we have the folder /a/photos which contains

/a/photos/jan
/a/photos/feb

And we have /b/photos which contains

/b/photos/mar

In the command prompt (terminal), if we write

mv /b/photos /a/photos

Then /a/photos will contain all of them (merged):

/a/photos/jan
/a/photos/feb
/a/photos/mar

However, I did the move operation in Finder (command+c, command+alt+v) and pressed the “overwrite” button thinking it has the same behavior as in mv

Now all my original files in /a/photos are lost. The only thing remaining is:

/a/photos/mar

How do I recover my lost files?

Thanks a lot

 

[Fishrrman]

1. Stop using the drive involved -- IMMEDIATELY !!
2. Get ahold of data recovery software (such as DataRescue3, Disk Drill, or Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery, or others)
3. Run the data recovery software on the drive and see what it finds.

However -- since you chose to over-write, there is a high possibility that at least -some- of the files in question are now overwritten and "gone".

One last question:
If the files in question were important, where's your backup ??????????