Help Recovering Files from Windows Hard Drive

[codependentcorndog]

I'm not the first person nor the last to have this problem and I know I could search for the solution on my own more but honestly I'm at the point of breaking down and I need help.

I just installed Fedora on an NVME that I thought was a fresh one, but was actually the C drive of windows on my dual booted machine. When choosing a drive I messed up with remembering which drive was which and hadn't backed up anything because I thought windows was still going to be there. I now have Fedora and am trying to access any savable files on the NVME but no luck yet. I've tried using TestDisk and PhotoRec but all that is showing are linux files. I reached out to a local repair person and he sounded hopeful but I probably can't afford how much it would cost per hour to fix this. I'm going to keep looking for solutions but would really appreciate any guidance in the right direction. Programs or guides would be great because I'm having a hard time even narrowing down what solution this problem has. I can post screenshots of anything that would help.

I also tried using Scalpel but can't figure out how to configure it to look for certain file types. Like I said I'm just freaking out and trying to fix things on my own and feeling very very dumb. Many shoulda coulda woulda's happening, I know what steps I will take next time, any help would be great. Thank you for reading.

UPDATE: I successfully recovered the files using PhotoRec but they are all disorganized so now I'm in the process of finding a way to organize them, will update as i found out things.

FINAL UPDATE: So it all worked out in the end. I mounted the previously unmounted hard drives on my system and somehow all my files had already been backed up so all the essentials and then some are safe. I'm not sure how this will help anyone else because I feel like i about lost my mind at least 3 times but there ya go! Thank you all for the help.

 

[APTI]

did you wipe the disk or delete partitions when you did install? if so then kiss the data goodbye. You erased it and overwrote it. The best practice in dual booting is to keep the OS on its own drive and not have it active during install. Then I suggest physical switching for the dual boot process. Sounds like that was not an option or you did not choose to do that.

go into utilities then disk in fedora.. look at your drive and see the partitions. see if windoze is still there. if it is then easy enough to recover files. click the partition and mount it. If no windoze partition then no windoze data.

highly unlikely to recover data if the partition was overwrote. give the above a try and let me know.

 

[osprey]

I'm not the first person nor the last to have this problem and I know I could search for the solution on my own more but honestly I'm at the point of breaking down and I need help.

I just installed Fedora on an NVME that I thought was a fresh one, but was actually the C drive of windows on my dual booted machine. When choosing a drive I messed up with remembering which drive was which and hadn't backed up anything because I thought windows was still going to be there. I now have Fedora and am trying to access any savable files on the NVME but no luck yet. I've tried using TestDisk and PhotoRec but all that is showing are linux files. I reached out to a local repair person and he sounded hopeful but I probably can't afford how much it would cost per hour to fix this. I'm going to keep looking for solutions but would really appreciate any guidance in the right direction. Programs or guides would be great because I'm having a hard time even narrowing down what solution this problem has. I can post screenshots of anything that would help.

I also tried using Scalpel but can't figure out how to configure it to look for certain file types. Like I said I'm just freaking out and trying to fix things on my own and feeling very very dumb. Many shoulda coulda woulda's happening, I know what steps I will take next time, any help would be great. Thank you for reading.

When a Linux installer writes an ext4 filesystem to the whole disk, typically, the main things that happen are that the partition table is overwritten, the ext4 filesystem is created, new superblocks are written and structures with inode tables are created. These items only take up relatively small parts of the disk, so a lot of data parts of the disk are still largely untouched.

If the new installation hasn't been used, or hasn't written anything to disk, then data parts may still be available for recovery. If the new system has started to write data, it's just going to overwrite any existing data from its pre-installation state impeding recovery.

Testdisk and photorec are good first steps to try and recover data, but since they have not succeeded, the problem is deeper. Testdisk is focused on partition recovery but since the partitions have been overwritten, it's going to be constrained in what it can do. Photorec looks at the file level, so there was potentially more hope with that. In any case, when using those tools, it's important to save anything they pull out onto a separate drive like a another disk or usb, which you can later inspect for files. They're usually not recovered with their initial names so there's work to do to re-identify them. I'm not familiar with scalpel.

If it's any help, the way I've dealt with this in the past is to do a byte-by-bye copy of the whole installation to another disk using dd, and then work on that second disk to recover files. That avoids messing up the original disk.

There are professionals who specialise in these deeper recovery tasks. They generally use specialised tools which aren't freely available so there are costs involved.

I sympathise with this unfortunate and frustrating situation.

 

[AlphaObeisance]

Consider installing testdisk and using photorec to recover your files. Don't let the name deceive you, photorec can be used to recover a vast variety of files. I've used it extensively in data recovery.

 

[APTI]

Consider installing testdisk and using photorec to recover your files. Don't let the name deceive you, photorec can be used to recover a vast variety of files. I've used it extensively in data recovery.

installing anything to the hard drive runs a risk of overwriting data. you should not use the drive at all if you want to recover from it. but I would place a bet you lost it. unless the partition is still there. My setup for fedora asks about existing partitions and does not remove them unless you do it yourself. You might want to check if the original partitions exist still.

 

[osprey]

When using testdisk and photorec, a safe way to use them is from a live disk. In my case it was system-rescue. There is a selection of live disks which include the testdisk and photorec software listed at their website here: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd, including their own linux boot disk, as well as a link to system-rescue and lots of others. Any of the live disks there will do. They boot up and then one can mount the installed disk partitions as read only so they aren't altered.

 

[codependentcorndog]

Consider installing testdisk and using photorec to recover your files. Don't let the name deceive you, photorec can be used to recover a vast variety of files. I've used it extensively in data recovery.

So I did this and photorec actually recovered a load of files but they are all unorganized, so now I'm trying to either find a program to parse the files if that's possible or use another program to recover the files since I know they are there.

UPDATE: Yeah just kidding all the files that it saved can't be viewed normally so I need to find a different way to recover them so they are even usable. A GUI option would be great cause I'm not great at console stuff but I don't even know if that option is available. I've seen the name CAINE being thrown around but just looking at the documentation for it is pretty intimidating so I don't know. Any advice I'll take at this point. I know the files are there in a partition listed as "unknown" and [Whole disk] in photorec, but also can't seem to allocate more disk space so there is enough room to back everything up. Every time I try and access the other drives there is a mounting error. I'll keep working on it and update as I can.

 

[bob466]

Backing up important Files etc to an External Drive is the first thing you do because when you install the Distro everything on the Drive you're installing it to is wiped...as soon as the process begins everything is gone.

You should start looking at backing up the whole system with Foxclone or Redorescue which create an image that's stored on an External Drive...should anything happen...you lose nothing. As for Timeshift...if you store Timeshift snapshots on the same Drive as the Distro...all the snapshots are lost...it's better to set Timeshift on an External Drive too.