Is Mac Data Recovery Possible from the Empty Trash Folder?

If you have not written anything new onto your Mac hard drive, then it is still possible to recover the deleted or lost data from empty Mac trash folder.

Since you have already mentioned that you don’t have any data backup available either on the Time Machine or external drive, then it has become even more difficult to restore the data without taking the help of data recovery tools. My suggestion to you immediately stops the hard drive from use and then run the free download option of some professional Mac data recovery software for empty Mac trash recovery. I know few data recovery software that provides free software download option using which a Mac user can make sure whether the deleted files are recoverable or not.

Data recovery software for Mac can successfully give you the deleted files preview option that becomes visible for free of cost. After that choose the Pro version of that software for further saving the recoverable Mac data onto your hard drive; which you have deleted from the Trash folder. You can use any one of these 3- software, i.e. TestDisk, this Mac data recovery software, and Disk Drill for Mac. I have used all these 3 data recovery software for Mac in the past and found great success with them.

Also, the software solution links mentioned by @Eric Root are helpful. Additionally, take the help of this guide to restore the deleted files back to the Mac hard drive.

Once you've emptied the Trash recovery of that data is nearly impossible.

If there is any chance of recovery at all try Prosoft Data Recovery.

https://www.prosofteng.com/datarescue-mac-data-recovery/

There is a free trial to see if it can recover what you need. But don't do another process on that drive until you've downloaded and run it.

Ideally you should use another bootable drive to download and run Data Rescue. Or booted from another Mac in Target Disk Mode.

Depending on how valuable those files are to you, you can also use a professional recovery service, like DriveSavers but it is much more pricey.

http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

This is the reason you should always keep backup.

How to use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support

Data Recovery – Best

Data Recovery – Disk Drill

Data Recovery – Data Rescue

Data Recovery – File Salvage

Data Recovery – Stellar Phoenix

Data Recovery - uFlysoft

Data Recovery - Recovering Deleted Files

Data Recovery - Recovering Deleted Files (2)

With File Vault active, it is even more nearly impossible to recover erased files, as encryption makes raw data unreadable and unrecognizable.

With SSD drives (if you have that), it is even more nearly impossible to recover erased files, as blocks are randomly scattered, and free blocks are deep erased some time after the Empty Trash command, when the drive itself deems it a good time to do so (TRIM and similar functionality), silently and without user interaction. Just having the machine on could have made the deep erase happen.

With the new APFS file system (High Sierra and later), it seems impossible to recover anything, under any circumstance.

The lesson here is to always have backups, even more so with newer disk technologies. The old undelete tools are becoming obsolete, as well as the recover specialists.