Understanding Data Loss: A Personal Account and Guidance for External HDD Recovery
Data loss can be a devastating experience, especially when it involves invaluable personal memories, childhood files, and important media. Recently, I encountered a situation where I lost approximately 1TB of data stored on an external drive due to unintended actions during a Linux session. I hope sharing this experience can help others avoid similar pitfalls and understand potential recovery options.
The Incident
While experimenting with an older Linux distribution (Bazzzite), I was exploring my collection of vintage Windows games. One game in particular, an ISO image of a Japanese PC game from the Windows 95 era, caught my interest. As I lacked a dedicated media mounting tool, I extracted the ISO using a zip application and attempted to install and run it via Lutris. The game installation proceeded smoothly, and I was excited to continue exploring retro gaming on Linux.
However, when I tried to access the ISO again—hoping to play Crypt Killer, an old unlocalized Japanese game—I encountered a problem: the ISO appeared corrupted, and the OS requested that I restore it. Attempting to restore the ISO using Linux’s drive utility resulted in a message indicating the drive was “being used.” Misunderstanding this message, I transferred the ISO to my external HDD, which contained virtually all my personal files and childhood memorabilia.
In a misguided attempt to access the ISO, I clicked on it, which prompted the system to attempt to restore or fix the file. Unfortunately, this action resulted in the complete deletion of the entire partition on the external HDD, without any prior warning. I immediately pressed cancel, but the damage was done. The drive now shows a strange set of files—mostly system or executable files with numeric filenames and some text documents—indicating the loss of a vast amount of data.
Attempts at Recovery
To recover the lost data, I used several Windows-based data recovery programs, including AOMEI, DiskGenius, and TestDisk. Despite their efforts, none could recover the lost partitions or files. The drive’s structure now displays only minimal remnants—such as executables named with numbers and associated text files—and the user data I once stored appears irretrievable.
Financial and Emotional Concerns
I am currently unable to afford professional data recovery services, which are often costly. Additionally, I am hesitant to spend money on software recovery solutions that may not guarantee success. This external HDD contains everything from documents, photos, videos, to old games and
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