Accidentally factory reseted Macbook (NO BACKUPS) please help

Question

Accidentally factory reseted Macbook (NO BACKUPS) please help

Hi!

My brother went to my user on my dad's MacBook to free up space as the Macbook disk was full. I guess my brother deleted something else with the trash and my dad's Macbook factory reset itself without any chance of backups. Since we did not know that it reset, we went through the entire login process in hopes our content is still there but unfortunately, it's completely cleaned out. There are really crucial files on there and definitely need a way to get them back. At least the more recent ones.

Any advice and support would be really appreciated!!

Posted on Jan 30, 2022 7:27 PM

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Answer 1

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steve626

Level 6

14,229 points

Jan 30, 2022 8:53 PM in response to Helpppppmeeeeeee

Someone may be able to help here but you have not provided enough information.

"Deleting something" is usually not enough to completely "reset" a Mac. Resetting a Mac to original factory condition requires a series of steps involving rebooting into Recovery and following specific steps, where one is warned about taking actions that will delete all the data on a disk.

If you can explain more clearly what might have actually been done (such as maybe deleting a user home folder, or deleting a user account?), there may be possible solutions.

You mention going through a login process, was that to establish new users or was it for an existing user?

You also indicate "no backups." Does that mean no backups were done ever, or no backups done recently? Even though there were "crucial" files? I guess it is what it is, but if Time Machine had been running in the past, there may be "snapshots" that have something similar to backup data.

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Answer 2

Jan 31, 2022 4:38 AM in response to steve626

So basically I’m not sure what exactly happened. My dad said that there were 2k odd items on then and I assumed that they were pics and some of my school files over the 2 yrs of me using it. While emptying the trash, it did ask for username and password but I don’t think it mentioned anything about cleaning the user/ disk/ erasing the mac. The login process was like when u get a MacBook and u have that entire process to do data privacy agreement, add apple login etc. Except files that were emailed to clients and colleagues, and stored on the cloud, everything else on there got deleted. I did advise my family that we should back em on a USB stick but since we all were busy we never really go to it.

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Answer 3

Jan 30, 2022 7:29 PM in response to Helpppppmeeeeeee

If you reset the computer all data is gone.

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Accidentally factory reseted Macbook (NO BACKUPS) please help

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