Comments on Profile Post by Lyander

I have everything backed up, but that's nearly 1TB of stuff that's going to clog up bandwidth for ages at the speeds I get.

If not encrypted you should be able to recover it. Another drive will be required to write the recovered data to. At no point is it safe to do anything to the affected drive until you have a game plan. What method was used to format the drive or erase the allocated volume?

Just windows disk management. I wasn't wearing glasses and rushed so misread the drive label. Don't have a separate drive large enough for the whole bit

You will need one. Recovery has to be to another drive. No way around it. For now, start reading: https://www.howtogeek.com/680458/how-to-use-microsofts-windows-file-recovery-on-windows-10/

Is there anything important on that drive that isn't backed up? Then hire someone to do recovery with the expertise and tools you don't have.

If you're just mucking about... Here's a toolbox, https://www.supergrubdisk.org/rescatux/ and I recommend the tool 'testdisk' .

Nothing critically important, the stuff I actually care about is on a separate drive from my games and music. Just gonna have to download a crap ton of stuff again. Lesson learned.

This happened to me once, I overwrote the drive too, and it was mission critical stuff, but spent some money on software ($350? I think?) and got most of it back, albeit in a much different order, with weird ass file renames and missing about 20% of all the files altogether. Was worth it tho, to me, as I didn't have a backup. Just gotta determine how badly you want the data back.

Update: yeah I'm going with DMDE free ver. Found everything on the drive, just gonna need a spare disk. Slow Philippine internet FTW, would be faster to order than to reinstall games and redownload media library.

Dumbass moves. We make them.

Last week, I chose the wrong customised option on my GUI sync program (grsync) and, instead of copying pics from my camera, it deleted a year's photos.

Here's the magic word: backups.

I hate to sound holier-than-thou, although in this case I may be --- it's only because I've been strict since I lost an HDD, and found my latest backup was a lot older than I thought. Lesson learnt the hard way.

Ah don't worry about it N, the lessons stick more readily when reinforced with an awareness of dumbassery. I do have backups of basically everything on there, and what isn't backed up is a video game installation that I can redownload at will. The main issue is just the sheer volume of stuff that'll kill my internet for ages, argh.

Is your backup all cloud? I wouldn't do that.

Well, actually, I'd love to, but getting started is too much. And my local backups (minimum 2) will always be my primary.

All cloud for now, yep. We've got a Microsoft family subscription (I know, I know) and I figured it'd be nice to make use of the online storage since it's all there. Been meaning to set up a NAS for months now but other expenses get in the way.

Just get a couple of external USB disks. I'm now using 5TB: if bigger is not already available, it will be by the time I need it!

NAS is just another thing that needs backing up.

Quick update but after verifying via DMDE that my files were still present I opted to do a full system shutdown to ameliorate risk of blocks being overwritten. When I booted my PC back up... the drive looks and works as normal? Home videos, music, and likely games too but haven't checked those yet. I am confused.

Quickly copy important stuff elsewhere, don't write to the disk until you're sure what's going on?

Good luck!

Too right. Never neglect it when a HDD gives a second chance.

I had a dead one, Put machine on table, on its side to open it up. Tried starting up. Yes, my hdd spun up and read, so I got the contents off it. And I was right: it was the last chance.