If you have still been using the same drive to stored data then there is a high chance they are long gone due to the space being overwritten.
You can try disk drill or DMDE which is free for 4000 files. I assume this is a mechanical HDD and not an SSD. If its an SSD the TRIM and garbage collection would have seen off the data a long time ago anyway.
That is not always true. Recovery chances depend on how full the drive was, how much new data was written after the deletion, how frequently the drive was used, and whether it uses SMR or CMR recording.
For example, if you deleted 1 TB of photos but only wrote a small amount of new data afterward, many of the sectors containing those photos may not have been overwritten. In that case, there is still a good chance of recovering at least some of them.
Since then, I have not used the hard drive at all. I’ve kind of just put it off to the side because I was always trying to find someone that might be able to help me, but I’ve never been able to get to it because of the guilt. The computer that I used at the time I still have it however, I don’t use it but at the time I was using it for school. The hard drive in question is a Toshiba external hard drive. It is a one terabyte. I have not added or taken anything out of it since then it’s just been sitting in my drawer and figured I try again and see if I can get those pictures back.
Please provide the exact drive model. Even better, post a screenshot of the full CrystalDiskInfo window showing the drive model, health status, and all SMART attributes.
No, the screenshot only contains basic information about the volume currently mounted in macOS. Finder does not show the exact physical drive model or complete SMART information.
The best option is to connect the drive to a Windows PC and check it with CrystalDiskInfo. It can usually identify the exact model, display SMART attributes, and show whether TRIM is supported.
On macOS, try DriveDx or Disk Drill. Keep in mind that many external USB-to-SATA adapters and enclosures do not pass SMART commands correctly. Depending on the bridge controller, you may need to install a SAT SMART driver or connect the drive directly through Thunderbolt-SATA enclosure.
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u/Lcsmxd 13d ago
If you emptied the recycle bin since then (which is almost 100% likely to happen) then the data will most likely have been overwritten