Disk Utillity OS resinstall Data recovery

Hello,
Every so often I decide to reset my computer. I usually make a folder of all important stuff on the desktop and transfer it to a USB. Today I forgot to transfer it and erased my SSD on "Disk Utility". Im really starting to panic because the files I had on my desktop are important. I reinstalled OSX Yosemite and have only downloaded a data recovery tool which proved useless. Ive made sure not to touch any information on the desktop. Please help, those files mean a lot!

THANKS!!

Welcome to the Forums.

I'm truly sorry to hear of your disaster.

Obviously, we all want to help. Do you very much mind providing a touch more information?

You cannot use Disk Utility (DU) to erase its own SSD, so may I presume that you went into Disk Recovery (Cmd + R), chose DU and did it that way? And by which means did you reinstall Yosemite? Same way? Finally, I've got to presume that you have no Time Machine Backup, no Cloning Software backup, indeed no backup whatever? Is that correct?

And if I've read you correctly, in effect you now have nothing on your Mac other than the OS (Yosemite).

If so, I have to say that I think data recovery will almost certainly not retrieve anything worthwhile. You could take your Mac (which model & year by the way?) to a professional outfit, but even if they could recover your data, you are talking mega dollars (600-1000 USD for example).

Get back to us, please. There could be others with more advice especially when we know the answers to my questions, above.

Ian

I am truely sorry to hear of your plight. I know the sinking feeling of clicking a button then thinking "Oh no!" I forgot to do this or that first. I'm sure it has happened to us all at least once.
I agree with IWT, I think your chances of retrieving your files are very low.
I do have one observation though. You are not the only OP who has acquired the habit of "resetting" their computer as you put it. To completely erase and reinstall an operating system plus all files is likely to reduce the life of an SSD because it has a limited number of rewrites. I suggest that you would be much better off using the pre set Maintenance Scripts of a (Free) application called OnyX to clean up caches, extents files etc. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro with a 500 Gb HDD and I have never done a "clean" instal. It gets used all day every day and I still have 108 Gb free which is how I keep it because I adhere to the min 20% free storage rule to maximise my speed. Good simple file keeping practices external HD's for archiving and regularly running maintenance applications like DU, OnyX and iDefrag (an option not available for SSD's) has kept this machine working through Mavericks, Yosemite and now El Capitan without a hiccup.
Last but certainly not least I have a dedicated external USB HD on which I run Time Machine. I suggest that this is the least anyone should do to back up their data and had you done this your problem would not have occurred. I strongly suggest that you consider this in the future, erasing your HD always has the risk of deleting something you didn't know you needed.

Every so often I decide to reset my computer.

Click to expand...

I'm not going to criticize you regarding the above, but in reality this is almost never necessary when using OS X. Windows maybe yes, OS X, no.

Last but certainly not least I have a dedicated external USB HD on which I run Time Machine. I suggest that this is the least anyone should do to back up their data and had you done this your problem would not have occurred. I strongly suggest that you consider this in the future, erasing your HD always has the risk of deleting something you didn't know you needed.

Click to expand...

I'm quoting the very good advice from member "Rod Sprague" because if you had followed it, you would not be in the situation you now face. You didn't mention which Data Recovery software you downloaded but most Data Recovery software works best when the data you're trying to recover has not been overwritten. Since you reinstalled Yosemite, you very likely overwrote what was on the desktop making recovery impossible without using a professional Data Recovery Service.