How can I recover lost files from a wiped Mac desktop?

Perhaps you created a new user account and have logged into it.

Did you have any sort of strange setup such as moving your home folder to an external drive? That association can get lost and the OS creates a new account on the internal drive. You would have to re-associate the external home folder the way you did originally.

Also - though you don't currently use it, if you ever used Time Machine, there is a small chance that you have APFS snapshots available to you.

Launch Disk Utility, click the Macintosh HD-Data volume and look for APFS snapshots at the lower section of Disk Utility's main window. After you select the drive volume you may need to click View > Show APFS Snapshots in the menu bar to see these. If by chance you do have any fairly recent snapshots, double click one to mount it and access the files contained within, including your desktop files.

You should take this computer to an Apple Store so that someone can look at it in person.

It sounds like when you crashed there was some glitch and a key folder was corrupted somehow. If this is true, then it should be relatively easy to recover all of your files, as long as someone it sitting in front of the computer.

My fear is that the more you try to hack around on the internals, the greater the risk that you'll never see these files again.

anjuli224 wrote:

No. I only have one user account active. No others. I've logged out and logged back in. Only one account to choose from and its got the same icon its always had. The only thing that happened before everything disappeared is that my system froze for a moment and I put it to sleep. Once I was able to, I restarted it. Then everything was gone.

If you open the Users folder inside Macintosh HD, are there any other folders besides your username and “Shared”.

Also, confirm you have never moved your home folder to an external drive?

Another place to look is in Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, select “Show all Devices” from the View popup menu and look in the drive list. You should see Macintosh HD volume group with a Data volume. Outside of that group is there another Data volume?

Couple of ideas found online that may help:

1st

1. Open Finder
2. Press Command + Shift + .(Period) - This should unhide all of the files
3. If they appear greyed out, open terminal and insert the following commands:

3a. Type out: chflags nohidden ~/Desktop/*

3b. Then, if they are still greyed out, type out: killall Finder

2nd

Your iCloud Drive - Options feature for "Desktop and Documents" got either turned on, or off somehow. Just flip it from its current setting in your Mac's Apple ID -> iCloud settings.

Alternatively, go to Finder Go menu > Home, and open the iCloud Drive (Archive) folder. You can also go to www.icloud.com and see your files there. But I suggest just flipping the setting back.

This is, maybe too late, a reason why you need to backup your files on a regular basis. No OS is perfect. Drive's can and do fail. Your important data absolutely, no excuses, must be in at least one more place at all times.

Not really expecting this to work, but it will only take a few minutes... restart the Mac in recovery mode again and use Disk Utility to run First Aid routines on the startup drive. Run First Aid on each drive volume - "Macintosh HD" & Macintosh HD - Data" - and also the container.

Run First Aid until it reports no problem remaining. Then restart the Mac normally and check for the existence of your files.

<< I have used recovery software Disk drill and easeus and neither show any ACTUAL missing files. >>

Those old packages can work OK on a Rotating Magnetic drive. This is because the convention has been to just erase the Directory entry. Those used blocks (still full of data) were then added to the Drive FreeLIst and after a while the data would be overwritten with new data.

SSD drives notify the drive controller of EXACTLY which blocks have become surplus, and these blocks are collected into SuperBlocks and bulk-erased in preparation for new data.

When an archaic utility like the ones you mentioned goes looking, there is literally NOTHING to find on an SSD drive. They should only be sold today with a disclaimer, but that is unlikely to happen.

First, Make sure "Show Items" is enabled in System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Desktop & Stage Manager. If it is, try toggling it off then on.

You'll likely need to restore from your Time Machine (or similar) backup.

anjuli224 wrote:

Yeah I don't have anything like that. I didn't have enough iCloud space either so I didn't sync my desktop to the cloud and the only reason I saved anything to my desktop was because the terrible Mac version of my Microsoft products kept wiping them.

So it's all gone forever unless someone can point me toward something that can dig deeper than Disk Drill or EaseUs. :(

If you have used or are using Time Machine Backup Utility  you maybe able to Restore the Deleted Files 

For future purposes

➡️ To truly protect your non replaceable Data. ⬅️ which seem to be the case with this computer

Have a 3-2-1 Rescue Plan in place and always current

3 Backups using 2 methods and 1 off site incase of natural disaster or un-natural disaster.

Each of the above should be done to a Dedicated Single Purposed External Drive 

Below link is intended to augment what TM Backup does 

https://bombich.com

You're not wasting anyone's time. You have a serious issue and are looking for a solution. The problem is there are only so many possibilities for help.

I would never, ever, use or trust iCloud as a backup. iCloud is a syncing service, not a backup solution. We use iCloud for one thing, and one thing only. And that's to have Find My enabled. Every other option is off.

And it's not just iCloud. There is no offline server we would ever put any personal information on. Backups from our Macs go to our own directly connected external drives. Access is immediate and comparatively cheap. Even a large SSD is much cheaper than the forever and continuous monthly iCloud payments.

For our iPhones, photos we take get dumped to our Macs as soon as possible. Which are then copied to an external drive. Contacts are easy to back up. You don't need to rely on iCloud to recover them.

anjuli224 wrote:

3 years worth of client work is gone ... I never once backed it up to the cloud

Client work: this is material that others have entrusted to you, you HAVE to back it up.

Every computer or disk drive will fail someday. It's a matter if when, not if.

My daughter's business: she keeps all client files on an external drive. That drive is backed up via Super Duper clone, frequently. We keep a separate clone backup in a different location. A third backup is kept online (not in iCloud; but in a separate photography online storage system). We have a lot of external drives. It's a business expense and the cost is built into her product prices.

Why did my Mac do this? I did absolutely nothing devastated as I basically no longer have a portfolio, client videos I was working on, data I was analyzing. The only thing I have is stuff I sent in the emails.

Not your fault. Electronics devices fail. Maybe relatively newish devices one sees a failure rate at 5% or so. Slightly higher for disk drives. It has to be considered and mitigated.

iCloud is not a good backup solution. I use it only to synchronize things across devices that I own. Such as Photos, Contacts, Messages. If you delete a file, it gets deleted anywhere.

And what is inside the folder with your name? Nothing? You should see several folders inside - Documents, Pictures, etc