I have no clue what happend but (almost) all the files on my local drive disappeared. The folders are still there, but if I click on "Get info" it shows they are nearly empty so there are no files in there.
The weird thing is: if I look at the "date modified" tab it shows they all got edited at the same time: 29 Jul 10:11. See screenshot attached.
The trashcan is empty so nothing is in there. Is there a way I can see what happened?
I didn't have time machine turned on :(, so does that mean there is no chance for me recover my files?
Best Answer
Time Machine is the only built in recovery solution, so the file changes are not logged in a way you could guarantee a trace of what happened if you didn't configure Time Machine to make external and/or local backups.
If you shut down the computer soon after you discover missing files, sometimes you can use software to look at free space and reconstruct missing files. That tends to work better on HDD as opposed to SSD, but some recovery is often possible. Not having the machine on actually increases the odds of recovery since you are counting on no other program over-writing the free space where those files used to be stored.
I'd start with something like Data Rescue if you want to try to recover any files.
Once you've decided to not seek recovery or you've done the recovery, you might check the storage in Disk Utility to see if the catalog needs repair.