Data Recovery on HFS/HFS+ File System

When deleting a file, Mac OS X deletes system BTree+ records describing the file. Therefore, it is hard to recover such file directly. Those records may remain in:

1.The swap file (if the deleted file has been deleted recently).

2.In the journal (if the HFS+ journaling is on, and the deleted file has been CREATED recently)

Actually, if a file has been deleted, chances that the records would be found are small. To greatly increase the chances to recover deleted files successfully , you may actively use scanning with enabled Raw File Search.

Note: All above is correct for intentionally deleted files. In case of a corrupted file system, HFS/HFS+ can be recovered quite successfully..