Deleted Macintosh HD hard drive/disk!! Anything I can do?

[winterwoojin]

Yesterday, my Macbook Air 2017 restarted to begin an update (Catalina, I think?). When I turned it on to see if the update had fully downloaded, it told me there was not enough space to download (I had only 17GB of open space on my drive but the update required 20GB). I was in a bit of a rush and couldn't take a long time to think, so I went into recovery mode and navigated to disk utility. I was trying to figure out how I could delete space off my hard drive to download the update, so I clicked "Delete" on Macintosh HD, thinking it would at least give a warning as to what it would do or give more of an explanation? Before I knew it, the entire 200GB+ drive of my Macintosh HD had been deleted. I finally was able to download the update but now my laptop is completely wiped of all data; as if I had just purchased a new computer.

I know I'm in quite a bad spot, I should've used an external drive to download the update or not acted as quickly, but I didn't understand the trouble clicking one button would cause! Is there any way I could get any of my important files back? On the application "Time Machine", I thought I had saved a backup yet it just keeps loading and saying "searching for a source". I was able to sync my iCloud back so I still have all my music, photos, e-mails, notes, etc., but the files I had on my computer were very important!

Any help would be very appreciated

Thanks!

(P.S I have tried two applications; Data Rescue and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard but both don't seem to be able to find my files? They can deep search through all the files on the current hard drive but I can't look on the deleted one)

 

[VineRider]

Go to settings / time machine. Check the box "Show Time Machine in Menu Bar".

Now, you should have a time machine icon in the menu bar. Press the option key and click on the time machine icon in the menu bar. It should then give you the option to browse other backups. Select that option and select the backup disk you are trying to restore from. Hopefully, you had your data backed up via Time Machine and can get your data back that way

 

[winterwoojin]

Go to settings / time machine. Check the box "Show Time Machine in Menu Bar".

Now, you should have a time machine icon in the menu bar. Press the option key and click on the time machine icon in the menu bar. It should then give you the option to browse other backups. Select that option and select the backup disk you are trying to restore from. Hopefully, you had your data backed up via Time Machine and can get your data back that way

Just did that, and nothing is listed under other drives! I'm guessing I didn't save on Time Machine... I thought that I had backed up on my iCloud? Also, now I'm seeing this message pop up.

 

[Ada Scott]

So sorry to know your situation here.
I'm Ada from EaseUS Software. I tracked our brand name and it informs me that you mentioned our software.

Our suggestion would be - scan your entire drive and check the RAW files, where you may find some files that are not listed direclty.
That's the only way to see if you can find any important files back. Just use the Free version for that!
Hope you can find back as many files as possible!

PS. The free version can achive this. No need to buy the Pro version at this stage. It's the same to other data recovery software.

 

[Dayo]

I recommend you to try ...

I presume like "Ada", that you work for the company that produces the software you recommended.
Would have been nice to declare this up front as she did.

 

[CooperBox]

I agree with the previous poster!
Whenever a newbie comes on-line and promotes some software or other commodity, one can bet that they have a personal financial interest. It's great when someone offers their assistance, and I commend Ada Scott for recommending 'her' software' with no hidden interest, especialy noting that the free version not a Pro (=payable) version should achieve the data recovery.
Interesting too that the other poster made no mention of a 'free-to-try' version of 'his' software.
I think there's a lesson here for everyone! If I ever need to purchase data recovery software, I know which I'd check out first and have more confidence in - at least initially.

 

[James_C]

@winterwoojin unfortunately it appears that you have not only wiped your hard disk, but then reinstalled the OS. If you had just wiped the hard disk you might have been ok to recover some of your data, but by reinstalling the OS you have probably overwritten parts of the disk that had data on it. It is unlikely you will be able to recover your data now. A specialist data recovery firm may be able to recover something, but that is likely to be very expensive.

 

[Ada Scott]

I just wanted to help as the issue poster must be very sad about the situation and didn't mean to promote the software at all ( winterwoojin has already tried our software).

As James Craner stated that the hard disk is wiped and then reinstalled the OS, so the chance to find back all data with the help of data recovery software is very limited. Also, I doubted that its a SSD not normal HD, which makes the chance even lower.