My 4 year old deleted 50 gig from my SSD

hi

i am sure your son was only trying to be useful to help his father.

fortunate you have Time Machine, and that its working (i hope). its your best best.
(note: Time Machine restores are something you should think hard about doing before you engage it, especially if its the 1st time you are doing it.
when it goes well, then it really saves you. but it can go wrong and not knowing what to do then can make it worse.
the good news however is that this is probably the safest time to use Time Machine as its very very stable these past 2 years or so. but read up on it well before hand.)

https://support.apple.com/hr-hr/HT201250

 

Oh, the little guy just wanted to free up some space.
He might had something important to add to dads files

Crafty son though. He will soon want a Mac on his own.
Hope you didn’t lost anything vital for you.

I would recommend doing a CCC backup ( Carbon copy cloner) too.
Maybe easier to compare, if that is preferred.
But few weeks lost work if you go back to a TM copy?
Those backups are suppose to be made at least daily, so you don’t have to lose anything when these things happen in one way or the other.

 

Was he really so thorough that he both deleted the files and then emptied the trash?
Maybe a too simple answer.
But it sounds very sophisticated for a little toddler to both delete files from somewhere and then go and empty the trash.
Not anything else that could’ve happened? Processes going on?

 

You can only -guess- what he might have deleted.

It's your computer, we can't tell you what's missing.
Only you can do that, by looking all over and ascertaining what's there and what isn't.

Looks like a TM restore is your best bet.

My advice:
Unless you want to go through this again, it might be better to keep a TM backup -at home- where it's "close-at-hand".

Or (my BETTER advice):
Get either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, and keep a bootable cloned backup at home instead.

 

Wait.

1. it may have only been only a trash empty action.
2. depending on the os it also can be a delayed reporting of storage space.

DO make a full backup before taking other actions.

 

In this case.
- Buy another external hard drive
- Install macOS onto said HDD
- Restore your Time Machine Backup to said HDD
- Restart and boot off your SSD
- Download and install Freefilesync then open it
- Set your home folder on your SSD on the right and home folder on your restored drive on the left (you'll see a bar labeled "Drag & Drop" just drag each home folder to each side)
- Click Compare (you'll probably get an error accessing some files just ignore and click the box to apply to all)
- Once the compare is complete. You'll see a list of files to be added or modified. You can go through the list and make sure it all looks right. If you want in the left hand "overview" pane. You can right click and exclude the "Library" to cut the list way down.
- Make sure the button "Syncronize" is labeled "Two Way"
- Once you are sure the list looks right click "Syncronize". Once it is done anything missing from your SSD should hopefully be restored. If not you may need to Sync other folders in the same fashion.

Be sure you sync like for like folders. If you tried to do two mismatching folders. You'd see end up with a mess if you actually synced. So, Home to Home.