Hey everyone! I urgently need your help! I just quick formatted my USB thumb drive that has a lot of my ArcGIS Pro assignments on it, around 21GB worth of data. I clicked "yes" to a prompt that I should have avoided, and now it seems like everything is gone. However, the drive still shows as having 58.5GB free space. I have some backups on an external drive, but I'm out of town and can't access those until later this month. I'm really in a bind because I have an assignment due this Friday at noon, and I desperately need to recover this data. What should I do? The thumb drive is a SeeDet USB2.0 64GB. I haven't attempted any recovery programs yet because I don't want to mess things up further. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
Don't panic! A quick format usually just deletes the file index, meaning the data can still be recovered. Stop using the drive immediately and consider professional help if you're unsure how to proceed. It's best to be cautious to avoid permanent data loss.
You can try using recovery software like Recuva or PhotoRec. Just remember to recover the data to your PC and not back to the USB drive. If you need instructions on how to use these, I'd be happy to help!
Just a heads up, it’s a tough lesson to learn, but relying solely on a thumb drive for important data is risky. Ideally, you want a backup strategy in place. If you're trying to recover yourself, you could create an image of the drive and use tools like 'dd' or 'testdisk' on Linux to avoid making things worse. However, if you aren't comfortable, it might be safer to wait for a professional.
Should I just go for professional help or are the software tools reliable enough?