Accidentally formatted External drive(help)

[tas9195]

My brother was trying to transfer something to the hard drive. He didn't really know how to use it. Somehow he formatted the drive not knowing it would delete everything. I have heard you can recover deleted files sometimes because it doesn't actually delete the files. Don't know how true this is and if it will work for Dish files or only windows files if someone knows if this is possible I would appreciate it. I had a bunch of movies including 3 seasons of Game of Throwns I was trying to catch up on. This really sucks. Please give me some good news.

 

[harshness]

Recovering Linux formatted DVR drives is difficult at best because little is known about what each file represents and what happens if it doesn't survive the recovery.

You'll need to use a Linux box with the appropriate filesystem linked in to access the drive and run recovery software.

I've seen testdisk and photorec mentioned as good Linux recovery tools.

The secret may lie in putting a note on the drive that it MUST NOT be used with ANY computer -- not even in an emergency.

 

[Tampa8]

No good news, very sorry. Formatting it lost the files. Though prohibitively expensive there are ways to retrieve files, not meant for this kind of problem. As mentioned there are some linux programs that might do it.
Have your brother pay for a month of HBO and then use HBOGO to catch up on Game Of Thrones.