Files don’t actually live anywhere special when they are on the desktop – that doesn’t map to a specific portion of the hard disk.
Files don’t even necessarily live in one contiguous block of disk space. They’re just data, and nearly infinitely sub-dividable. Modern hard disks actually try to avoid writing in the same place twice in a row, just to keep exercising as much of the disk surface as possible.
When you delete* a file, the location on disk where the file was (and still is) stored is not guaranteed to be reclaimed any time soon. Unless you were doing something massive, like editing a movie, you are not likely to have overwritten the original data, and as long as your recovery application can find the file (which may be spread across multiple sectors of your disk) it can recover it.
Walter
*If you use the super-double-secret delete, then yes, the spot where that data was is overwritten three times in a row with random 1s and 0s. But a normal delete simply marks that spot on the disk as available for new data, and nothing else happens.
On Jun 1, 2012, at 4:35 PM, RavenManiac wrote:
Hey David. I couldn’t find the file with a DataRescue Quick Scan, so I’m trying a deep scan instead. This is what happens when I find excuses for not fixing my TimeMachine NAS, which broke down a few weeks ago. 
BTW, how does the Mac OS X files system work? I know deleted files are still there provided they haven’t been overwritten, but is that more or less likely to happen with files and folders placed on the desktop?
Also, are there any tricks to file recovery that I should be aware of?
Thanks!
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