I made a mistake while copying files on my Linux machine. Instead of using the command to copy files to "/dev/sdd1," I accidentally used "/dev/sdd" and now Linux, Windows, and MacOS can't read the drive. MacOS says it's unformatted, and Windows shows a question mark next to it. I used to have two partitions, but now it appears only one is functioning. Is there any way to recover my data, or is it lost for good?
3 Answers
It sounds like you might have damaged the partition table on your drive, which could make data recovery tricky—and potentially expensive. Before you do anything else, use a cloning tool to create an image of the drive on another storage device. This way, you can attempt recovery from the image instead of the original drive itself. You can rebuild the partition table to get the drive back in working order, but that won’t restore the data you lost.
I’m not sure how that specific command would cause the issue, but I’ve read that some recovery software can help. Just be careful and don't write anything else on the drive! Check out lists of recovery tools online; some good options include TestDisk and Wise. A while back, I accidentally flashed a large ISO to an external drive and was able to recover most of my data using Wise—it just took a while to scan the drive.
Using the command you mentioned wouldn’t typically overwrite the drive, but it can mess up the partition table. There's actually software that might help you recover data, but make sure you don’t write anything new to the drive! There are several tools available like TestDisk, Stellar, and Recuva that could do the job. I had a similar issue once and managed to recover most of my files using one of those programs, though it took a bit of time.
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