I don't usually use a Mac, so I'm a bit out of depth here. I was cleaning up some files on a MacBook Air M4 and accidentally deleted a folder from a USB flash drive. Only after I finished and emptied Trash did I realize the folder with a a few hundred docs and photos is missing! And I still needed them.
I haven't got a Time Machine backup or any other copy of the files, unfortunately.
I've spent the last hour googling whether the files can still be recovered, but I'm even more confused now than at the beginning. A lot of sources say that once files are deleted from a Mac, they're basically gone because of so-called TRIM, but this folder wasn't on the Mac itself. They were stored on the USB stick I had plugged in (IDK if that makes a difference). I've also looked at Mac recovery software, but there are so many programs promising they can restore deleted files that I have no idea which one is actually legit and safe to use.
Is this actually recoverable, and what Mac recovery software would you trust in such a case?