Accidentally wiped months of photos from my Seagate external drive… any hope?
I accidentally deleted a big chunk of my photo archive..a few months’ worth — from my 16TB Seagate external hard drive. Emptied the trash without realizing, and even copied new files after that. I tried recovering them to another drive, but the images show up as blank white icons and won’t open.
This isn’t an SSD, just a regular HDD, so I’m wondering if there’s still a shot at getting those files back somehow?
All Replies
Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
If nothing else works, look into professional recovery. It’s pricey, but since it’s a large HDD and not SSD, the odds aren’t terrible. They can often pull fragments that software tools miss.
Yep, that’s exactly what you want. Just make sure the sample is from the same camera model and taken with the same settings if possible. I’ve used that method once on a drive recovery job — it doesn’t work every time, but it’s worth trying.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know header damage could cause that. I do have other photos from the same camera, so I can probably use one as a reference.
Also, about the “white rectangle” icons — that usually means the file headers are damaged. If you manage to recover them but they still won’t open, try a photo repair tool that can rebuild headers using a sample photo from the same camera. I’ve seen that fix images that were completely unreadable before.
Yeah, good call. Once you’ve got that image, use a recovery program that reads the raw data rather than relying on file system info. Sometimes, even when the file structure’s broken, you can still carve out photos from the remaining data blocks.
Got it. I didn’t make a clone earlier, just ran the scan directly. I’ll try imaging the drive first this time.
It might. But make sure the recovery tool you’re using doesn’t try to “fix” the files automatically — that can make things worse. First priority is to clone the drive or create an image of it before doing anything else. That way, even if the recovery attempt fails, you’ve still got a snapshot to go back to.
I stopped as soon as I realized. Haven’t touched it since. You think a deep recovery scan could still pull something usable?
Once new data starts writing to the same sectors, things get tricky. But since it’s an HDD, there’s still some hope. The key is to stop using it right now. Every new file you add overwrites parts of the deleted data.
Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Recent Topics
-
How to Fix Windows 11 PC Not Waking Up from Sleep Mode?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Fix Valorant VAN 1067 Error on Windows 11?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Fix the “Secure Boot Can Be Enabled” Issue?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Resolve the 0xc00007b Error in Windows?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
-
How to Fix “Windows Can’t Communicate With the Device or Resource” Error?
by 2 days, 9 hours ago
Yeah, might be my last resort. I’ll try the clone and header repair steps first before going that route. Appreciate everyone’s help — at least now I know there’s still a bit of hope left.