Ask HN: How to Retrieve Lost Files?
All files disappeared from my HDD. What are my options?
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.
Spinrite (https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) might help.
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...
>> 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
Recuva works.
If HDD, remove the hard drive, image it, apply data recovery software to image
If SSD, mourn your lost data
How to image it?
Learn to have and use backups.
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.