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General discussion

Recovering previously viewed images from temp memory...

by limokon Jul 13, 2009 7:46PM PDT

I dropped my external hard drive. It's making strange sounds and I can't access it, so it's most likely dead.

I had some images on hard hard drive, that I would like to recover if possible. I looked through those images today, so I was thinking they might still be in the temporary memory of my computer.

Would it in any way be possible to recover those images from the temporary memory of my computer, or is there no such thing as a temporary memory that would store such things?

Just for the record, I haven't turned off my computer since I viewed the images/the death of the hdd...

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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If you can still see the images,
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Jul 13, 2009 10:00PM PDT

burn them to a CD/DVD or copy them to a thumbdrive.

If you cannot access the external, then it is likely that the images are on the internal HD as well as the external

P

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.
by limokon Jul 13, 2009 10:06PM PDT

I can't access the ext.
I can't see the images now (closed the "preview" app long time ago...) just figured since I'd looked at them today, they might still be stored somewhere temporarily...

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Try opening the images from the "Recent Documents" menu,
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Jul 14, 2009 4:35AM PDT

under the Apple at the top left of the screen

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No.
by tkessler Jul 17, 2009 7:59AM PDT

OS X does not store files in readily accessible caches. While some programs will do this, the cache files will appear as garbled text to you if you try to read them. For pictures, files will be loaded into RAM by the viewing program, and when the program is closed those images will be purged from RAM.

The only time a program might save a copy is if you have an autosave feature enabled, or if the program uses a scratch disk/folder to do work in. Additionally, if you've received any of them in Mail then they could be in your "Mail Downloads" folder, which is in your /username/Library/ folder.

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