Ask HN: How to Retrieve Lost Files?

5 points by Temporarily21 2 years ago | 9 comments

All files disappeared from my HDD. What are my options?

lmorandi 2 years ago |

If it's an HDD as you said, you can try a tool like recuva: https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva, and if it's not enough, if you have knowedge in linux you can try foremost which is a forensics tool, it's gonna take more time but it's way better than recuva because of the way it works.

thesuperbigfrog 2 years ago |

Spinrite (https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) might help.

eva_cananim 2 years ago | |

I'm just going to point to this blog post by a reputable data recovery company that tested spinrite and found that it "fixed" a bad sector by overwriting it with irrelevant data from elsewhere.

https://www.recoveryforce.com/spinrite-a-data-recovery-progr...

thesuperbigfrog 2 years ago | | |

>> blog post by a reputable data recovery company

Coca-Cola's review of Pepsi cola finds that it does not taste as good.

Reviewing a competitor's product == advertisement

undopamine 2 years ago |

Recuva works.

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

aifooh7Keew6xoo 2 years ago |

If HDD, remove the hard drive, image it, apply data recovery software to image

If SSD, mourn your lost data

Temporarily21 2 years ago | |

How to image it?

theandrewbailey 2 years ago |

Learn to have and use backups.

sysadm1n 2 years ago | |

And if backing up, use the 3-2-1 strategy:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

> You may have heard of the 3-2-1 backup strategy. It means having at least three copies of your data, two local (on-site) but on different media, and at least one copy off-site.