Is it possible to find files that have been deleted and the trash is empty?
My desktop was cleaned out and I am not sure why, but it had some files I would like to recover.
Maybe...
I suggest you give extundelete a try. (Assuming that you use an ext partition)
extundelete is a utility that can recover deleted files from an ext3 or ext4 partition. The ext3 file system is the most common file system when using Linux, and ext4 is its successor. extundelete uses the information stored in the partition's journal to attempt to recover a file that has been deleted from the partition. There is no guarantee that any particular file will be able to be undeleted, so always try to have a good backup system in place, or at least put one in place after recovering your files!
As the site warns, the more writes to the filesystem, the less likely you'll get any files. You probably want to unmount your partition immediately and then run the program.
