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I've accidentally formatted my 5TB storage drive (I got so angry with myself that punched the wall and broke my right hand over it) but luckily all the important files are still in "excellent" recoverable condition. Problem is I don't have any other place big enough to salvage the files over to. My immediate option at this point is to use the formatted drive I'm recovering from.

Does recovering from the same drive essentially overwrite the other data I'm trying to recover? Should I just wait and buy another 5TB drive to put the recovered files in?

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    If you care about your files you shouldn't do this.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 19, 2016 at 22:14

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If the data has value for you, the least you should consider is a separate drive to restore the data to. Honestly, if the data is valuable to you, you need to be looking at two drives. One to make an exact clone (use CloneZilla or something similar) of the existing, formatted drive in case you mess up your recovery step, and a separate drive to serve as the destination.

If I was to use only one additional drive, I'd use it to perform a duplicate of your existing drive, then attempt to recover the data on the existing drive.

It all depends on how valuable the data is, though.

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  • I'm curious; is the recovery process basically the same thing as copying files a hard drive? Or is recovery just "unearthing" data that's already there, so no overwrite involved?
    – user547352
    Jan 19, 2016 at 21:41
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    @slowsum generally recovery tools read from the affected drive and write somewhere else. You do not want to write to the affected drive as you can overwrite the data you are trying to recover.
    – Keltari
    Jan 19, 2016 at 21:44
  • @Keltari: Yes, but not necessarily. IIRC "testdisk" for example should be able to reconstruct the original partition and filesystem layout. I've done this one time looong ago, but I think I only messed up the partition layout, not reformatting.
    – TJJ
    Jan 19, 2016 at 22:26
  • @TJJ its always better to be safe than sorry. If the data is important, do not risk it
    – Keltari
    Jan 19, 2016 at 22:49
  • Of course he should still first make a copy of the entire drive, and then experiment with whatever on the copy!
    – TJJ
    Jan 19, 2016 at 23:09