SSD $MFT rewritten, lost data - Ever happen to you? Restore options?

writhziden

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I have an external backup drive I use for my primary backup on my PC. This morning, I needed to reorganize files on another drive. As usual, Windows would not let go of the drive through the safely remove option, so I had to shut down my computer, remove the drive from the USB 3.1 gen 2 port, plug in the other drive to the same USB 3.1 gen 2 port, and boot up the PC. Windows lost its mind (Windows 10 Professional 1909 18363.836) and thought the new drive was the old drive but kept giving me access denied messages if I tried to open the drive in File Explorer. I used recuva first to see what it could find in the files, but it seems one of my backup images on this drive was overwritten by $MFT.

I turned off TRIM on all SSDs (the external drive is an SSD) immediately, but I read that really needs to be done before these issues occur. Most of that applies to deleted files, so maybe I'm still safe since I did not delete the files and only the file system itself was corrupted? The recuva option only allows me to recover about 95 GB out of nearly 600 GB of my missing data. Does anyone know of a better option for data recovery from an SSD?
 
WZ, did Recuva "ask" you to purchase the Pro version in order to go past 95GB?
It did not, but that is probably because I did not end up using Recuva to restore all data. I ended up using a different company's professional version since I had media I wanted to restore that was corrupted: Ontrack® EasyRecovery™ Professional For Windows
Ontrack EasyRecovery | DIY data recovery software
 

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