Accidentally created Windows installation media on my 2TB external SSD, best recovery software? Disk Drill vs R-Undelete SE vs DMDE vs R-Studio?
Hi everyone,
I accidentally created a Windows installation tool/media on my 2TB Samsung external SSD, which had very important data on it.
The drive now appears like a small Windows setup/boot drive instead of my original 2TB storage. I have not intentionally formatted it again after realizing the mistake, and I’m trying not to write anything more to the SSD.
I scanned it with DMDE, and it actually finds my old exFAT structure and folders. I can see many of my original folders/files, so the data is definitely at least partly recoverable. However, DMDE file structure is still a bit confsing, and when I tried recovering too much at once, it hit errors from some broken/reconstructed folders. I want to recover as much as possible while keeping the original folder structure.
My situation:
- 2TB Samsung external SSD
- It was accidentally turned into a Windows installation media
- Original filesystem seems to have been exFAT
- DMDE sees old folders and files
- Some recovered volume results looked weird, like 502TB, so the filesystem metadata is clearly damaged/corrupted
- I want to recover to a different physical drive, not the same SSD
- I want to preserve folder structure if possible
- I am willing to pay if the software is actually worth it
I’m comparing these tools:
- DMDE
- R-Studio
- R-Undelete SE
- Disk Drill
- UFS Explorer
- GetDataBack
- ReclaiMe
Which one would you recommend for this exact case?
Also, should I:
- Continue with DMDE and recover only the main folder structure it found?
- Use R-Studio instead because it may handle the full folder structure more cleanly?
- Avoid Disk Drill/R-Undelete for this type of case?
Any advice would be appreciated. I’m mostly looking for the safest approach and the best software to recover the original folder structure from an SSD that was partially overwritten by Windows Media Creation Tool.