Please help me... I write image iso with ImageUSB to my external storage by mistake

[ningush]

Hi . I am sorry, I dont know if i needed to make presentation first... I am very nervous right now..

I had my External Storage (1tb) connected to my pc and also a pen drive to Write image of linux to install it... and I was distracted and I did format the pen drive but when i was about to write image i refleshed the drives and chose my external storage instead! (i did not format the external storage) but I put Write image to the external storage by mistake and now i dont know what to do! =(("" I have all my son life´s , on that external storage without backup! 10 years of information videos photos since he born.... plz tell me that my data is not erased? I just write image to disk but not formated it! plz help me... i cant lose that data... dont know what to do =(""""

[David (PassMark)]

Not good.

No backup at all for 10 years???

Did the entire write operation complete, or did you catch the mistake quickly, maybe only after a few MB?

How big was the Linux image?

Once you have overwritten data on the drive there isn't any way of getting it back. (that's why imageUSB has a double warning messages, to avoid this problem).

Even worse is that imaging the drive will have overwritten the partition table and NTFS file system index. So even the bits of the drive that weren't overwritten will be hard to recover.

Partial recovery might be possible with file carving utilities. Try PhotoRec and OSForensics.

[ningush]

No backup at all =( I spend all my money in that external storage to save files.. and now i ruin in =SS I ve spend all night reading trying to understand how recover. The only program that worked right now was EaseUS data recovery pro, It stayed 12 hours reading the unpartitioned part of storage disk ( 930 gb) and didint find nothing =S just some linux files that i ve never seen! It completed all writing process.... and then when it finish i was going to remove the pen from computer but i quick realized that wasnt the pen that I write image to =SSS

i really dont know what to do. i will try those programs now and icare data recover too. If u know something that can help me plz tell me. Tks for your aswer.

[David (PassMark)]

It completed all writing process....

Then it 100% sure you have lost a significant amount of data. Plus it is also 100% sure this overwritten data can not be recovered.

Recovery of some of the data that was not overwritten should be possible. But much of that data will likely also be corrupted & lost as your FAT/NTFS file allocation table will be gone. Thus file carving is the only option.

Did any of your friends and family have copies of the files? Are any of them still on your camera? Are any of them still on your hard drive? Did you EMail them to anyone? Are some of them in the cloud?

[ningush]

Tks for your help. I am very sad but I guess i have to deal with it. Iam working 24h/day to try recovering data, but no sucess till now. waiting for more 14 hours with mini tool partition, to see if i can recover the partition table :S dont have cloud, few fotos on facebook and family, the more important ones and thousand of photos movies and passwords docs,everything was on that disk =S sad to see my wife´s crying because my stupid head..

[ningush]

Till now it find some ext3 partitions but only 500mb eatch really dont understand... will wait for end to see content

[David (PassMark)]

EXT3 is the Linux file system, as you copied a Linux install over your external drive, it is no surprise that you finds the EXT3 file system on it now.