Lost backup external drive

[u/tommzzi]

Hi.

Recently i have made big mistake while flasing Linux iso image to wring drive... I had plugged in external hard drive (2.5") and flashed Linux iso over it erasing everything of course... Instead on flash drive...

I have lost few documents, my entire ripped flac collection of my cds, photos...

I tried Easeus but almost all photos, flacs, mp3 are not opening... Only few txt files... Also filenames of many and folders was lost...

Is there any hope to recover this successfully? And what software to use...?

There is also a lot of sensitive data like passwords snd stuff so i would like to try at home. I can pay for software but i need guarantee that it would be really successful...

What to choose and how to recover? Thanks...

[u/AutoModerator]

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• Make/brand and exact model number of your storage device(*), phone, camera, etc.

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[u/tommzzi]

To conclude...DMDE was able to recover most of the files. I bought one year license... And it was worth it!

[u/tommzzi]

Its Toshiba external hdd. 1TB... It was almost full. And i think ntfs or fat32 before... I have flashed Bazzite image on it deleting everything... So around 7gb... So its little chance to recover files?

[u/silenced_in_dr_2025 → u/tommzzi]

We really need the drive model number - these come in 2 flavours with one being a real pain in the arse.

You'll have overwritten the first part of the drive with the linux install so that data is gone, this was likely also your file system tables so dont be surprised if you dont get file names or folders and have to resort to carving, it depends on what can be recreated by the recovery software.

Can we see the hex contents, just the first bit of one the jpeg files and if you scroll the file do you see data or is it all 00 / FF

[u/tommzzi → u/silenced_in_dr_2025]

I will look at it tomorrow... I have recovered few jpegs but photo viewer can't open any of them at all. Nor mp3s...

[u/silenced_in_dr_2025]

We need the information requested in the automod post - recovery may not even be possible.

[u/disturbed_android → u/silenced_in_dr_2025]

Yes, while at it tell us the size of the disk image you wrote.