NTFS mounts are overwritten

I have downloaded and installed the new Ubuntu21.4. It formatted the entire disk and I lost my NTFS mounts c:\ and D:.

Is there any way to recover NTFS Data (images and videos) from the hard disk.

Solution 1:

I think there is a chance to get back some of the data, at least when you did not select the option to actively overwrite the drive during formatting. A quick format only destroys the partition tables but not the data itself.

There are two tools that install with the gparted partition editor in Ubuntu. They are called 'testdisk' and 'photorec'. They might be part of the default installation. They are command line tools with simple menus. Jus start them with

sudo photorec
sudo testdisk

Photorec especially was designed for finding video or image files on damaged drives.

The most important thing is to not change anything on the damaged disk. If you can remove the disk from the PC and make a 1:1 copy with an external disk copy station to a new drive - they are less expensive than a drive. Then store the original disk at a safe place and only work with the copy. If you made a mistake, just make a new copy. Install Ubuntu on a new computer and afterwards attach you copy as a separate disk. Again, do not install anything onto the damaged disk as you likely loose any chance to get back anything.

Of course the best option is to keep the copy at home and send the original to a professional data recovery service. If you really have valuable data, you should really consider that option. Those guys can do a lot more than those tools.

I did successfully recover images and documents from a damanged mac drive with photorec under Ubuntu. I tried other tools before but nothing really worked well. Unfortunately I can not reocommend a particular tutorial or good info site, but I would recommend to browse the web for user experiences with those tools and get a feel for the functions before actually starting to get back your data. If you have success, please expect that all filenames and dates will be lost and replaced by some cryptic numbers. So if you stored multiple versions of documents it will be hard to find the newest one. You also should not expect to get back directory structures. You will get a long list. You should be able to filter file extensions, though.

good luck.