So in the process of trying to resolve an OS issue on another machine I have in the same case as the machine I am running now, I accidentally reformatted the SSD I was using as shared storage between the two. Now I need to know if I can recover it, as I know HDDs are easier as they are more of a mechanical sort of magnetic storage instead of an electrical MOSFET storage medium as in SSDs. When I plugged the accidentally reformatted SSD into this machine, It did read in the "properties" menu as still having the same amount of storage full as it should have. But when i was messing about in a panic I must have done something stupid, and now it reads as COMPLETELY empty. I've tried running EaseUS but it hasn't found anything. I also tried using Yodot drive recovery, but apparently it doesn't work on Windows 10.
I should note that almost 25% of the information on this drive, if not more, is not able to be reproduced. I unfortunately was not aware I had not set up automatic restore points on that drive, and the most recent backup is from a year ago. Since then, all of that data is gone and not able to be recreated without hours upon hours of work, if at all.
For now I will remove it from my system. I am willing to ship it to someone and pay them for their trouble if they can recover my data. Unless it is gone forever in which case I might as well end my suffering. I'm really at a loss here and can hardly believe I was this much of a blithering idiot by reformatting the wrong drive the ONLY time I accidentally left more than one plugged in at a time.
I should also mention I do have a separate laptop I can use running windows 7 x64 if it may help for more program options, but right now, I don't have a dock.
If recuva does find files, recover them to a different drive. Definitly NOT to the drive they're on, as you may be overwriting files that still need to be recovered, making them unrecoverable.
If Recuva doesn't find it, I highly doubt you'll ever get that data back.
You should use dd in linux to create an image of the SSD, then do your data recovery on the image. This will stop any further damage to the disk, especially as if it's been formatted and TRIM kicks in then it will wipe everything. Then you can use some data recovery software to try and recover data, on linux you can use testdisk.
Unfortunately, I don't have linux, nor do I have a spare drive that isn't messed up and not working to put it on. Based on what I'm seeing, I assume whatever I did in that properties menu deleted more than just the pointers, but also used TRIM like CaptainChaos said and truly wiped everything.
So based on this information, should I just say screw it and start trying to recover all that data as much as I can by just starting from scratch? Fortunately I have SOME idea what I lost, but as far as documents, FML pretty much. It's all GONE for good, right?
Its pretty much standard. In order for you to get optimal performance they erase deleted file periodically. Im not sure how often exactly that is, but its often.
It's not that SSDs are harder to recover files from than HDDs, more that it has these features like TRIM and secure erase. The longer it was powered on the more likely its all been erased.
You could confirm the data is gone by taking an image of the disk and checking the raw sectors, but you should start to look at how much of it you can recover from secondary sources.
Then buy a NAS, or backup to some online storage as your lessons learned.
(ive been there done that, i erased my active OS with all the data on it, and wondered why it wouldn't boot up again)
Found a god-sent long lost flash drive with a majority of my lost files on it including the documents I thought were lost (most of them I think). Should be able to recover about 90% of what I thought was gone thanks to this. (Which reminds me I really need to clean off my work-space, geez).
SO...Ideas to prevent future problems...(feel free to add the ones I haven't thought of)
Enabled System Restore on this drive with 25% space allocated for backup data.
Triple Backup on Flash drive and Laptop.
Ensure only ONE drive is ever connected to a system while troubleshooting/installing new OS.
i use the test version of macrium reflect to do images of my SSD's with Dual-Boot on it to my NAS. It works really good and is encrypted as well as compressed. Maybe it's worth considering buying for incremental imaging. @Eden Does it work as good as mine? can it do planned images?
Use the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) / system image option in Windows 10, and after the VHD is created, if I remember correctly, Win 10 has native VHD support, so you can open VHD files natively in Explorer after that for accessing individual files.
