Recently, we have had an uptick in accidental deletion of files. I’ve been there myself. From lesson plans to family photos, it’s quite a snag. True story: just last year I somehow managed to delete family photos from a weekend trip to Washington D.C on my phone. You could imagine how my wife felt at the time she found out… I’m still trying to recreate every photo we took during that trip.
- First thing first: With a Mac, Time Machine can be your saving grace. You’ll need an external hard drive for this to work. Hook it up, then go to System Preferences –> Time Machine –> and designate the external hard drive as your saving destination. You can even set it up update automatically, but you’ll need the hard drive to remain connected to do it.
- Another tip: When you delete, only tell files to “move to trash”. By doing this, you bypass deleting files completely (more on this in a second). So by getting in a habit of only “moving to trash”, files stay in the trash bin. Then from there, you can go ahead and delete them if you really want them gone. NEVER use the quick delete key-command. You’re just asking for trouble if you do!
- Something else to check: Sometimes you think you are deleting a file, when it is really stored somewhere else and NOT your Mac hard drive. An external hard drive or flash drive actually has its own trash bin. Also- Mac has a little trick up its sleeve that could help. It actually keeps a “hidden” folder that saves trash from those external hard drives called “.Trashes”. To enable these hidden folders/files in Sierra or newer: simply use the SHIFT+CMD+. hotkey (that’s the period key). In an older version run the following commands in Terminal –> Press Command+Space and type “Terminal” to bring it up. At the prompt, paste these two lines in there one at a time, hitting Enter after each line:
- defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
- killall Finder
After running these commands, you should be able to see the “.Trashes” folder. You can even empty it from Finder to clear some space on a USB stick.
But don’t get to this point! Google Drive should be heavily used. Make it practice to take all of your hard drive folders/files and upload them to your Google Drive. What’s great is that Google Drive’s trash pretty much just sits there, so nothing is ever really gone forever unless you trash the trash. And even then, there might be a way to get it back via system administration. I’ll be honest… I NEVER touch my Google Drive trash. This is a GREAT safety blanket. Plus, you can even get your family photos to sync to your Google Phots, or have them sent to a Google Drive folder as a backup!