Linux.com: How to Recover Lost Files After You Accidentally Wipe Your Hard Drive

“Recently I wanted to make sure I had enough space to back up my
home digital videos and pictures, so I purchased a new hard drive
to add to my home Linux server. I moved all the files I wanted to
save onto a single hard drive and repartitioned the old hard drive
so I could upgrade to a newer version of Linux. After going through
the process of reinstalling the operating system, I mounted the
backup hard drive and discovered that it was empty. I had some how
mixed up the hard drive I used to back up all the data with a hard
drive that I wanted to wipe. Because I had done such a poor job of
retaining backups on external media, I did not have any backups of
my pictures and videos.

“After the overwhelming feeling of dread passed, I started to
look into file recovery options. I demoed a variety of commercial
products to see if any of them could find my lost files or
partitions. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, I discovered TestDisk
and PhotoRec, and was able to use the latter to recover my lost
files…”

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