How to Recover Lost Data from an Accidentally Wiped External Hard Drive
Hello, fellow tech enthusiasts!
We’ve all experienced the anxiety of losing important data at some point. I recently faced this dilemma after mistakenly wiping an external hard drive that was formatted as Btrfs. This drive held a treasure trove of cherished memories, including old photos and videos, as well as vital files from several game servers.
Currently, the drive remains unmounted and has not had a new partition table created, which provides a glimmer of hope for recovery. I took the first step by using TestDisk, which is generating an image file (image.dd). From this, I’m optimistic about retrieving my beloved photos and videos.
However, a particular concern lingers: the game servers. Ideally, I would like to recover them with their original folder structure intact. Without that structure, identifying the myriad files and determining what belongs where would be quite the challenge.
This raises the question: is it feasible to recover the folder structure using different tools, or is that a bit of a long shot? I would greatly appreciate any advice or recommendations on recovery strategies that might help retain the original file organization.
Thank you for your support and insights!
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Hi there,
Recovering the original folder structure from a wiped Btrfs partition can indeed be challenging but might still be possible depending on the circumstances. Since you’ve already created a disk image with TestDisk, I recommend exploring the following options:
Remember to perform recovery operations on the disk image (image.dd) rather than the original drive to prevent further data loss. Patience is key, as reconstructing folder structures manually can be time-consuming but rewarding if the data is critical.
Good