How can I recover files on USB that time machine has erased?

While transferring pictures from my girlfriend's MacBook to my USB drive, I received a warning message when I ejected the device, saying that Time Machine had not finished backing up. Apparently my girlfriend had enabled Time Machine to back up her system every x minutes when it detects an external device. When I checked my USB on my laptop, it was empty. All the pictures and some files of mine that I did not back up were seemingly erased. Is there any way to rcover these files? I am particularly interested in a few word documents of mine. Any suggestions are much appreciated.

If you delete files from your internal hard drive and don't save a copy of them other then in a Time Machine backup you will eventually lose that data. As you have found out. Time Machine is NOT for archiving files. It is a program to svae what is currently on your internal drive to another so it can be restored at a later date. Once you delete files from your internal drive TM will no longer back them up and then delete old backups where those file may be. This is totally normal for any program like TM, IE a Back Up and Restore Program. It is up to the user to SAVE a copy of files they want to keep on some other media before they delete them from an internal drive. If you had never deleted those files TM would still be backing them up.

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