I'm in a bit of a bind here! My teenager just built their first gaming PC, and we ended up needing a different USB than the one we initially picked. So, I took a 32GB SanDisk USB from our fireproof box, thinking it would work fine. We followed a tutorial to put Windows 11 on it. I noticed a comment afterward saying that this process would delete anything already on the USB, but by then, it was too late. After he finished setting it up, I discovered that my 800 family photos were gone. Is there any chance I can recover those lost pictures? Free options would be the best, but I'm willing to pay for recovery if needed.
4 Answers
I'm really sorry! USB drives will often do this wear leveling, which means even if you haven't completely filled the drive, the old data gets marked for writing over. It's possible that if you didn’t use up most of the drive's capacity, some photos might still be recoverable, but the chances aren't great. Software like DMDE might also help, but be careful with it as it can be complex to use.
I'm afraid it’s likely that your photos are really gone. Before doing anything more, don’t touch the USB drive! It's crucial not to write anything to it again until you've explored recovery options. If you have backups on any other device (like a camera SD card or cloud storage), make sure to look there first!
Absolutely! And for future reference, always keep your important files on multiple devices to avoid this situation.
Unfortunately, it sounds like the process may have overwritten your photos. If your original files were larger than the Windows installer size, there's a slight chance you could recover some of them with software like Recuva. Remember, the filesystem might not show them since the headers are gone, but recovery tools might help find the actual data that still exists on the drive.
Yeah, and make sure to act fast and avoid putting new files on the USB! Otherwise, those potentially recoverable pictures could be lost forever.
You could try free tools like Recuva out, but honestly, if the photos have been overwritten, they’re probably gone. Just remember to always have backups of important stuff! It's a hard lesson learned, but try to keep another USB or an external hard drive for your precious photos in the future.
True, I’ve heard recovering files after a format is tricky, but worth a shot if you find helpful recovery programs. Just don’t modify the USB until you’ve tried!