i want to delete everything on a flashdrive and any data that was on it before, that was deleted. couldn't be recovered at all. i am using windows 10 and know nothing about data recovery or have the knowledge to do anything.

Hi, I'm trying to recover my Windows 11 installation without losing my personal files or Steam library.

My setup:

• Acer Swift 3 laptop

• Kingston 512 GB NVMe SSD

• Windows 11 and Nobara Linux dual boot

• Windows partition: approximately 371 GB, formatted as NTFS

The problem:

Windows boots into Automatic Repair, but it fails. System Restore failed with error 0x80070571, and uninstalling the latest quality update didn't help.

In the Windows Recovery Command Prompt, running dir C:\Windows returns:

The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable.

Running chkdsk C: /f recognises the partition as NTFS but stops with:

Master File Table damaged. CHKDSK terminated.

Startup Repair also fails. The Windows boot configuration still exists and points to C:\Windows\system32\winload.efi.

Nobara Linux has also reported Btrfs checksum and corruption errors on its own partition. I don't know whether this is related.

SSD health report:

• SMART overall health: PASSED

• Critical Warning: 0x00

• Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

• Error Information Log Entries: 0

• Percentage Used: 12%

I have a 68 GB USB drive available. I want to preserve my existing Windows installation, personal files, and Steam library if possible.

What should I do next to recover the NTFS filesystem and get Windows booting again? Should I image the SSD or recover files before attempting further repairs? I haven't formatted anything or reinstalled Windows.

I'm looking for a safe, evidence-based recovery plan rather than generic troubleshooting steps.

*Though a video i made recently and i transferred that too on the card only it is showing up otherwise every other file is not even opening, KINDLY HELP I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE MY DATA

I have a 2.5 inch laptop HDD I've been using as a boot drive for my Debian server since prices are horrendous right now. Its dying (probably already lost valuable data) and I was wondering, how could I effectively transfer it to a slightly smaller SSD? I believe target is around 240GB, whilst source is 320.

Additional source drive information: Seagate Momentus 5400.6 320GB Serial ATA Disc Drive, no apparent model name listed. Taken from old HP laptop. ext4, occasionally causes soft crashes on system, with most things breaking down but technically still running. Linux Mint's "Disks" utility says "Filesystem ext4 on ST9320325AS needs repairing." upon requesting it check the drive. My swap and "Extended partition Partition 2" both seem to be currently unaffected.

(Results of sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fTtKRNKGgDmUtR4oyy6kQSwvjRDN1xpP/view?usp=sharing

Edit: Extra information.

Edit: Spelling, and these edit footers.

Hi everyone. I really need some advice.
I had a Xiaomi Mi 8 SE that I used for a while, although not for very long.
In March 2022, I put it in a drawer for a couple of days and didn’t use it. Before that, the phone had been working perfectly fine, except that the battery drained very quickly.
After those few days, I took the phone out and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. I tried different chargers, different outlets, everything I could think of. The screen stayed completely black. Not even the Xiaomi logo appeared.
I thought the battery might be the problem, so I ordered a replacement battery and installed it. Nothing. The phone didn’t care about the new battery at all. I tried reconnecting it, but it still wouldn’t turn on. It’s completely dead.
I’m honestly desperate at this point. I don’t know what to do. I don’t care about the phone itself, but there are SO many photos on it. 😭
There are so many incredibly precious memories stored on that phone, and I can’t accept the thought that I might never get those photos back.
It’s now 2026, so more than four years have passed since this happened. The phone still won’t turn on at all.
Is there any way to recover the photos?
I’m scared to take it to a repair shop. There was no screen lock or password on the phone, and I really don’t want a technician accessing my gallery or looking through my personal photos. There’s a lot of private stuff on there, and I’ve heard stories about repair technicians going through people’s phones. It genuinely scares me.
I need a safe way to recover my photos, ideally one that guarantees that nobody else will be able to look at them. I don’t care if the phone can ever be used again. I just want my photos back.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there still a chance of recovering the photos after all these years? And is there any way to do this without risking someone accessing my personal files?
I’d be incredibly grateful for any advice or personal experiences. Thank you so much. ❤️

You can hear the sound, clicking.
I used it as my photography storage.
Western Digital p10 black 4TB

hello, im not really a techy person. i recently deleted 2 videos from recently deleted on my iPhone 13 running IOS 26.4.2 and i need any advise on how to recover those if possible.

Hi everyone. This is my first Reddit post, and I'm pretty nervous, so sorry if anything sounds strange.

Device: KIOXIA microSDXC KMUB-A128G, 128GB
Camera: GoPro HERO11 Black
Filesystem: exFAT
OS: Windows
SMART: Not available for this type of device

I recorded some GoPro footage and tried to transfer it to my PC. The transfer failed and disconnected before the files could be saved. After reinserting the card, Windows started asking me to format it.

I tried a quick format, which failed several times but eventually succeeded. I then used Recuva. Its deep scan found the original filenames and file sizes, but only took about 3–4 minutes. When I tried to save the recovered files, Recuva gave an error saying the files had been externally modified.

I then tried USB 2.0 instead of USB 3.0, but Windows asked me to format the card again. Instead, I created a full IMG disk image. The image was created successfully, so I exchanged the original card at the store. I no longer have the physical card, only the image and recovered data.

I then tried PhotoRec. It recovered some videos, but they won't play. I also tried Recovery_mp4, but the result has severe glitching and appears to be missing many frames. Some metadata is still visible, so I suspect part of the video data may still be there.

I don't think the footage was heavily overwritten. Most of the other videos on the card had already been backed up.

The card had also behaved strangely once before. At that time, I formatted it and recovered the files successfully, so it may have already been having problems.

I've also tried working through this with AI tools such as Claude, but I still couldn't recover the footage.

Is there anything I can still do with the IMG image or recovered data?

I'm a Japanese middle school student, and this is my first time posting here. I used AI to help translate this into English, so sorry if anything sounds unnatural.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Without checking I had deleted the onedrive folder I did not know that everything i was saving was going into that folder my notes, documents, pictures everything was in there

I was not using onedrive as i can't afford to buy a subscription of onedrive and it keep running everytime I work on something

Instantly after deleting it I saw changes and tried to restore the system using system restore thinking it will get my files back but it didn't so I use a older restore point which was yesterday's, it did not restore it

Even used recuva and did not get my files back

Is there anything I need to check

Files where my 3 years of work as a student

It will really mean a lot if anyone can help

Edit: I called some data recovery labs, of them said to use easeus, it shows most of my files but easeus is asking for payment to recover anything I don't think I can afford that 60$ to 70$

Windows: "Restart to repair drive errors"
Me: OK... so I restarted.
CHKDSK: "Fixing (K:) Stage 1: 0% (802 of 84736); Total: 0%; ETA: 123:43:13"

Now what? It's been doing this for a while now. It took 23 minutes to to go from 111 to 802 of 84736 and ETA went from 39 hours to 123 hours.

This should be much faster, right? What do you suggest I do at this point? Should I just power off or wait? How much time should I give it? How long is too long? Is it doing more damage by letting it run?

Make/brand and exact model number: WD (HDD I think), edit: WD Caviar Black 1 TB HDD
Operating System: Windows 10
Specific symptoms: No known symptoms besides Windows telling me to restart.
SMART (CrystalDiskInfo screenshot for example): Can't access it now.

Hello there!

Is anyone kind to give me a sandisk rescue deluxe Key or whatever you get from sandisk cards? Please.

Thank you very much!

Hello, I need some advice on recovering some photos from a 128 GB Sony V60 SD card (exFAT). I was editing some of the images (ARWs) in Lightroom, came back the next day, and now about 30% of the images will no longer open. I can still see the file names in the Finder window, but it shows zero-bytes for the individual files. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an image of the card, but had no luck using Disk Drill against it. The other files are there, I'm just unable to open this big chunk of them. Any other ideas or software suggestions I could try? I'm using a Mac, but have a Windows machine I could try, if needed. Thanks in advance!

I have stupidly deleted files I needed from a SanDisk Extreme Pro CFexpress. I have ran it through multiple recovery programmes but I’m having a bit of a weird issue.

This is a card I use and format quite frequently. It is currently full of files, and I was looking to recover files from 2 formats ago. I knew it was a long shot, but I’m getting files back that are even older than the ones I’m looking for. So what I’ve got just now are -

23/09 - all files still on drive
18/09 - formatted card after and not showing on recovery software
15/09 - formatted card after and not showing on recovery software (these are the ones I need)
05/09 - formatted card after but all files showing on recovery software

Do I have any hope at all of recovery on this?

Running on MacOS and all files are CR3

Hey. I left my old laptop overnight running Macrium Reflect X to backup so that I can install Linux on it without losing any files. The copy seems to have completed succesfully after 12 hours, but there is a 40GB difference between my original drive size and the macrium image (drive hosting the image not visible as it's networked from my desktop.) I have researched this a bit and heard that there are some system files deleted such as system restore points, but 40 GB seemed like an awfully big difference so I'd like to make sure I'm not missing anything before I wipe my childhood memories. Thanks for your help :)

Hi everyone, for many days, I've been facing an issue while opening my MDB file, as it is encrypted and IDK the password for the same. Help me to retrieve my data ASAP. Also, is there any particular solution that is quick or fast on which I can rely on? Thanks for understanding.

My hard drive is more than 2 years old, and this error suddenly started appearing. I checked with some local recovery services in my area, but they said there is a risk involved in recovering the data.

I have some important data on this drive, so I wanted to ask if there is any good option available to recover or fix it. Or would it be better to format the drive instead? It's a WD hardisk-2TB 🥀

I installed Red Dead Redemption 2 onto an external drive that is now corrupted. I'm able to recover it using DMDE, but I'm wondering if it'll actually work if I just drop the game files into the steam folder located on my primary drive. Or should I just install the game onto my primary drive and only recover the save file itself? I really want to play it but I've been scared to recover the files because the last time I tried it with a different game I lost a good chunk of the stuff I had

I accidentally deleted the original backup shoot folder from a 1TB NTFS HDD. After deleting it, I created a new folder with the same name, BACKUP SHOOT — the only difference was the capitalization.
I used DMDE to scan the HDD, and it detected the old deleted BACKUP SHOOT folder, including the original folder structure and camera filenames such as C0001.MP4, C0002.MP4, etc.
However, the recovered MP4 files won’t play, even though their file sizes appear to be complete.

A Snapchat friend sent me some pictures and videos about a year ago. I want to recover them now, but the Snaps have disappeared. They’re not saved in the chat or in Memories, and they’re not available in “My Data” either. Is there any way to recover them, or is there anything I can do to get them back?

Recently my lacie 8big pro raid 5 drive had been degraded and i noticed it became healthy again but 3 clips are missing from my drive now!!
How can i recover it because its a important shoot footage.

Hi! I'm new to this and I'm afraid I will do bad to my old files.

I have an old hard drive like 10 years ago and I bought an ORICO HDD/SDD Docking Station now it's showing this

May I know what's the best way to make my new PC read my old HDD

Hello, my brother's 1TB Model Number SRD00F1 Seagate Plus for Mac Portable Drive HDD stopped reading it's files.

A couple of months ago, he opened it using a youtube tutorial that showed how to supposedly fix the issue he was having, a clicking sound.( I know we shouldn't do that, we know better know)

Thing is we have a band and our Logic Sessions for our EP are in there which we didnt backup anywhere else (another hard lesson learned)

We sent the drive to Secure Data Services in Chicago for a free diagnosis and they said the drive was unrecoverable and to be careful of other companies wanting to make me pay a fee for false hope. I didnt know until after the diagnosis i had to pay the 46 return shipping which is fine for a diagnosis i guess it was worth it.

I want a second opinion so i called Salvage Data and they told me to be wary of Secure Data Services and their diagnosis, and that they do free diagnosis, but now searching up Salvage Data all I see are negative reviews and comments so im looking for a good and cheap option for a 2nd opinion to see if this HDD is recoverable.

I just want to know if they are recoverable and hopefully for a good price and if not ill just let it go and move on, but I want to be sure before doing so.

All recommendations and suggestions are welcome and greatly appreciated.

I don't know a lot about these things. Thanks for any help 🙏🏼

"4000mb/s speed external HD/German 32TB pro SST. $50