A few days ago, my HP laptop began displaying visual artifacts and boxed errors, so I shut it down immediately. When I restarted it, I got a "Boot device not found" message, and Windows Boot Manager was missing from the BIOS boot options. HP's storage diagnostic reported no hardware problems. The laptop uses an NVMe SSD and is an HP 14-cf2067. I tried starting a Windows installation, but the installer now shows the drive as empty with no partitions. My main priority is recovering the files that were previously stored on it. What should I do next?
2 Answers
Stop using the laptop and do not install Windows or create new partitions. Any writing to the NVMe SSD could overwrite data and reduce the chances of recovery. If the SSD is still detected by the firmware or another computer, make a sector-by-sector image or clone first, then work on the copy rather than the original. If the files are irreplaceable, a reputable professional recovery service is the safest option.
If the drive is visible but its partitions are missing, a partition-recovery tool such as TestDisk may be able to locate and restore the old partition table, and it might recover at least some files. This requires care and should be done from a separate boot environment, not by continuing the Windows installation. TestDisk is not guaranteed to recover everything, especially if the partition information or filesystem has been damaged.
Could TestDisk recover at least some of the files if the SSD is still detected?