I wanted to install an OS from an ISO to a USB stick using dd on my Manjaro Linux. I managed to give the wrong target as 'of' parameter which lead to the first ~1.3 GB of my external 1TB HDD being overwritten. This 1 TB HDD was pretty full and important data is on it.
(Of course, I know about backups, and as a matter of fact, the data on this disk was just parked there while I was extensively migrating from Mac (using Time Machine) to Proxmox (using PBS). I already sold the Mac, so I can't get the data from there, either... Ouch. Damn.)
The HDD was exFAT, with a simple MBR, no GPT. As the file system was exFAT I thought trying data recovery from windows would be more straightforward, but in Win11 (multi boot system), the disk could not even be discovered as its file system was neither exFAT or ext.
So I went back into Manjaro, using fdisk I removed the partitions that came to existence with dd, and called mkfs.exfat which created a new partition spanning the entire disk. In my mind, this should not have destroyed anything more, as all changes should have happened in the already destroyed space.
Back in Win11, I could then find the disk and ran Recuva data recovery on it. However, Recuva, despite finding all 270000+ files and even their names, told me that all files would be unrecoverable, which I highly doubt.
I would be willing to spend money for the recovery process, but first I'd like to ask if there are free tools or PowerShell/Linux commands that will for sure work in the given scenario. If that's not the case, I would really only like to spend money for an app that actually works for me here!
I have already said goodbye to those overwritten 1.3GB, but I really need to get the other files back, preferably with their names, in Windows or Linux, which ever is best for the task.
