Data Recovery

Data recovery is a complicated process that requires care and attention to be done properly. Look through the scenarios below to decide which method of data recovery you will need to do.

Make a disk image

Attempting data recovery always has a chance to make your situation worse, causing the permanent loss of your data.

For priceless data you should seek professional data recovery services.

Always make a disk image before attempting recovery of data on a disk. You may need to restore this image to the disk between data recovery attempts.

Before attempting data recovery you should evaluate the SMART data for your disk. If it is failing data recovery may stress the disk and cause a complete failure.

Caution

If you are seeing “cyclic redundancy check” anywhere, you will not be able to attempt recovery at home and should seek professional data recovery services.

Scenarios

A readable disk (Live Linux Session)

A small obstacle preventing you from using your computer like normal such as:

• Your computer won’t turn on for some reason
• Your computer is BSODing when you turn it on so you cannot get to Windows like normal.
• Your laptop screen broke so you can’t see anything
• You cannot log into Windows for some reason

For these issues, you can recover files by attaching your disk to another computer or recover files with a Live Linux Session.

My disk is physically failing (gddrescue/Safecopy)

Your disk is showing signs of hardware failure and you need to create a safe copy before attempting any other recovery methods. This may be because:

• Your disk is making clicking, grinding, or beeping sounds
• You are seeing “bad sectors” or “read errors” in event logs or SMART data
• Your disk keeps disconnecting or is not detected consistently
• File transfers from the disk are extremely slow or freeze
• The disk is showing signs of physical damage or deterioration

For these issues, use gddrescue or Safecopy to create an image of the failing disk before attempting any other recovery methods.

My disk is visible but inaccessible (Testdisk)

You have a drive that is visible in Windows but it has no data on it. This may be because:

• You deleted partitions on the wrong disk (But did not make new ones)
• You turned your computer on and it says your disk needs to be “initialized”
• Your disk is “RAW” in disk management
• Your disk is “unknown” in disk management
• Your disk is “unallocated” in disk management

For these issues, use Testdisk to recover your partition table.

I accidentally changed data on my disk (Photorec)

You had data on your disk, and it had new data written to it, replacing the old data.

• You formatted the wrong disk
• You installed Windows on the wrong disk
• You installed Linux on the wrong disk
• You formatted and then put data onto the wrong disk

For these issues, use Photorec to recover individual files.

Other resources

• old wiki article