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Feb 15, 2012 9:47 AM in response to nano_artby Kappy,You cannot recover an overwritten file. See the following about file recovery:
Basics of File Recovery
Files in Trash
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
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Feb 15, 2012 10:15 AM in response to nano_artby JoeyR,Unless you're perfect, mistakes will happen. That's why it's always important to back up important data. Are you using TimeMachine by any chance? As Kappy indicated, once you overwrite a file, you can't really get the original back. You can generally recover a deleted file until that space on the disk gets overwritten, but once you save changes to a file, you're basically overwriting the original. I'm not completely sure how that application deals with files. It may create temporary files, or do its own auto-saves.