Wondering about recovery

[TanBrae]

Last night I was attempting to Airdrop a folder from my Mac laptop to my Mac desktop. I've not had problems before doing this, but for some reason Airdrop wanted me to save to iCloud. I do NOT want to use iCloud, and thought I had turned all of that off (another issue for another day?). Putting a short halt to my Airdop attempts, I went in to System and turned off al things iCloud (again).

I came back to Airdrop and finally got the folder transferred. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention (I should know better than to multitask!), but a little bell rang in my head that the folder "looked different". I opened the transferred folder and the items were in there. I then proceeded to put that folder on my laptop into the trash. Then, I transferred another folder to my desktop, checked the contents, and trashed the laptop folder. Then, stupidly, I guess, I dumped the laptop's trash.

I've been desperately trying to recover, via Disk Drill, the dumped trash contents. So far, no go. The first folder on my desktop, when I try to open it, says "Resolving alias to ? ..." and works and works, then this message pops up: "The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time..."

So, I now get it. For some reason, that folder transferred as an alias. WHY it did that I do not know. Never had that happen prior.

I'm guessing I'm out of luck, but thought I'd try here to see if anybody has any suggestions. So far, Disk Drill has not, seemingly, recovered those emptied trash files. BLAST! I've had some computer forensics in college, but apparently not enough to recover those files. I don't own any "deep dive" software, so AM I really screwed?

 

[Rodananne]

Airdrop is infamously unpredictable, sometimes for no apparent reason, when everything is as it should be, it just doesn't work.

When you say, "Airdrop wanted me to save to iCloud" was it iCloud or iCloud Drive? They are two distinctly different things. iCloud Drive exists on your computer and on iCloud as remote storage.
The things you see in the iCloud Drive folder in the Finder window sidebar (assuming you've set Finder preferences to show it) are effectively shortcuts to the file which is stored in iCloud Drive (in iCloud).

If that all sounds like gobbledegook think of iCloud Drive as the same as Microsoft's OneDrive, GoogleDrive or DropBox they are all remote storage options. Apple's equivalent is iCloud Drive because it resides in Apple's iCloud.

Apple's iCloud is designed to sync data from native (an some third party) applications (Contacts, Mail, Reminders, Calendars, ect) to all devices on the same Apple account including iCloud Drive.

If Airdrop fails it's easy to put a file/folder into iCloud Drive and it will appear in iCloud Drive on any other computer logged into the same Apple account and in the Files app of any Mobile device but until you download it to that device what you are seeing is an alias.

So from my point of view iCloud and it's various components are invaluable at syncing and storing data and with some exceptions, like iCloud Photo Library, integral to the intended operation of Apple devices.