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Just an hour ago I used the ext2fsd tool to copy photos from a FAT32 formatted SD card to an ext4 partition on a 2TB HDD while running Windows 10. After the copy operation completed I made the mistake of formatting the SD card without doing a thorough verification of the backup.

When I connected the backup drive to another computer the folder which I copied the files to no longer existed. I'm certain I didn't make a symlink or anything of that sort because it took nearly half an hour to copy the 14 or so GB of data.

My question is, what happened to the files I copied over? I'm currently attempting to recover the files from the SD card using the "Recuva" free recovery software seeing as I only did a quick format I believe this should work.

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  • Depending on the operating system, most data may still be in tact. I suggest making an image of the SD card before doing anything else, just in case you accidentally write to it. Then, make sure to restore files to another location. You copied the files? You didn't move them? Great. Just re-copy. Probably much faster than trying to restore.
    – TOOGAM
    Aug 20, 2017 at 9:41

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I would suggest trying to use the photorec[1] program on both the original SD card and the 2TB HDD to which you copied the files. It was specifically designed to recover from deleted files on removeable media. I'm not sure what happened with ext2fsd, but you might try seeing if ext2fsd can see the files if you reconnect the HDD back to the original computer. Note that very few people develop and use ext2fsd, so I can't really speak to how well it works.

[1] http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Most users will use Linux to read the FAT/VFAT formatted file system, and copy it to a ext2/3/4 file system, and not try to use Windows for that task. So unfortunately, use used the less travelled path, and ran into some kind of bug. :-(

Good luck!

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