Possible to recover Mail data after deletion?

Question

Possible to recover Mail data after deletion?

I have mail data I need to get off a Mail account that was closed. In asking my colleague, she told me that the account was merely closed, and no deletion took place. If the user is removed from mail, does the data automatically get deleted? If not, are the files hidden, and could they possibly be recovered?

Thanks!

TiBook G4 550, Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Posted on Jan 30, 2006 9:53 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jan 30, 2006 11:09 AM in response to Karl Kaufmann

Not sure what you mean by "if the user is removed from mail".

If this closed email account was deleted from Mail, the account named folder and assocated account mailboxes within are also deleted at that time.

If you disabled the account in Mail only, you can re-enable the account to access messages in the account mailboxes but if the account was deleted, your chances for recovering this data are not good.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 30, 2006 12:14 PM in response to Allan Sampson

Thanks--I kind of figured that. But, are there any disk utilities that could be used to try and rescue the data (along the lines of the old Norton Undelete)?

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 30, 2006 12:53 PM in response to Karl Kaufmann

There are some data recovery utilities available but when this email account and data was deleted from the hard drive is the most important factor.

If this data was deleted in the last couple of days, your chances for recovering the deleted data are greatly improved. If deleted from the hard drive several months ago or longer, it is very likely the location on the hard drive were the original data was located has been over-written by other data making recovery impossible by any means.

I suggest you try Data Rescue by Prosoft Engineering. I have not used Data Rescue but I've heard that is recovers files that others cannot.

Keep in mind this type of data recovery utility is primarily designed for recovering existing data from a failing or failed hard drive and not for deleted data.

Prosoft Engineering provides a free trial version of Data Rescue.

Reply