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I decided to format my laptop and reinstall everything again, so I borrowed a friend's external drive that had content in it and downloaded a disk imaging software to backup my hard own drive on to my friend's drive.

I figured the software automatically created a folder in the destination drive, but no: it overwrote the whole thing and its content is now identical as my hard drive's - And my friend's files are gone...!

Is it possible to recover my friend's data?

Fabby
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Minik_Lyd
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  • Clearly you used a cloning option - partition to partition - and the software should have warned about that, that all the contents of the target drive will be overwritten. Now there's no guarantee whatsoever the previous data can be recovered but experience tells us that most should be recovered using software designed for that purpose. The longer you use it now the chances drop dramatically. So, stop using it right now and wait for someone to suggest what to do in more detail. –  Oct 21 '16 at 23:34
  • I think it's gone. Your data overwrote his. – heynnema Oct 22 '16 at 00:13
  • Was it NTFS or EXT? If NTFS see this: http://askubuntu.com/a/776317/271 If EXT see this: http://askubuntu.com/a/795190/271 – Andrea Lazzarotto Oct 23 '16 at 13:39
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    If you overwrite something, I don't think it's possible to recover, since there's completely new data where the old stuff used to be, not just a lack of a pointer to the old data. – TheWanderer Oct 26 '16 at 01:11
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    @Zacharee1 correct but the destination drive was larger than the source, therefore the non overwritten data can be recovered. Of course OP should have been performing the thing carefully, knowing what he was going to do. – Andrea Lazzarotto Nov 17 '16 at 12:22

1 Answers1

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Before we continue let's be clear:

Some data has been irrecoverably lost!

However, depending on the size of your data and the size of your friend's data, some might still be recoverable. E.G. if you cloned a small 80GB HDD onto a 2TB HDD, containing 1TB of data, only 80GB of the 1TB is truly lost.

If the other way around, all data is lost.

If the former, TestDisk is your best tool, but the work will be tedious...

Sorry, but that's the best we can do without actually laying our hands on that HDD... :-(

Community
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Fabby
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  • «TestDisk is your best tool» Not really if we are talking about a broken $MFT (the OP's question is not clear about this, though). – Andrea Lazzarotto Oct 23 '16 at 13:40
  • @AndreaLazzarotto: there is a copy of the $MFT at the start and end of the disk, so TestDisk should still find some info and be able to recover some files automatically. – Fabby Oct 23 '16 at 17:52
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    You are confusing the MFT with the boot sector. The $MFTMirr file is not at the end of the partition, it is right in the middle of it. Moreover, it is almost useless since it is not a copy of the MFT but it actually contains only the first 4 records. – Andrea Lazzarotto Oct 23 '16 at 18:11
  • Hey, if you have a better idea, post your own answer. If it's better then mine, I'll upvote! ;-) @AndreaLazzarotto – Fabby Oct 23 '16 at 18:32
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    I can't unless the OP confirms the file system type, but I've linked two possible duplicates. – Andrea Lazzarotto Oct 23 '16 at 19:31
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    RecuperaBit, huh? Looks cool! I'll look into it some more tomorrow when not as sleepy – Fabby Oct 23 '16 at 23:17