Hey everyone, I'm in a bit of a crisis. I was using a Linux distro called Bazzite and messing around with some old Windows games when I accidentally deleted my entire 1TB external hard drive full of childhood memories. I tried playing a game from an ISO that turned out to be broken, and when I clicked on a restore option, it wiped my drive without any warning. I briefly halted things, but now I'm stuck with all my data seemingly lost. I've tried recovery software like AOMEI, DiskGenius, and TestDisk, but they only show me incomprehensible files with numbers and random text. I can't afford to pay for professional recovery services, and yes, I know I should backup my data online, but that's just not an option for me at the moment. I would really appreciate any suggestions on how to recover this data or guidance on where to go from here. Thanks a lot!
2 Answers
Hold up! Before you try to mess with anything else, just leave your drive alone for now. Since you stopped the overwrite process, there’s a good chance your data might still be intact. I recommend finding someone knowledgeable in data recovery just to be safe. They’ll know what to do without risking more damage.
A professional recovery service could help, but it might cost you. If you're looking for alternatives, why not consider a smaller external drive for future backups? I know it's tough, but protecting your data is worth it in the long run!
Yeah, I get it now. I thought my external HDD was a safe backup, but turns out backup strategies really matter. I've learned my lesson!
I haven't touched anything except analyzing with those programs. Just really want to confirm if the data's still there. Seeing it would make me feel a lot better.”