![](/static/66c60d9f/assets/icons/icon-96x96.png)
![](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/q98XK4sKtw.png)
So, I’m not sure if the process has changed in the last decade or so but in a long-ago computer forensics class step 0, before all else, was to never operate data recovery on the original disk. Create a block level image of the entire device, then work on that.
My go to steps for recovery have been the following in the years since:
- create an image of the entire disk (not a partition) using ddrescue
ddrescue -d /dev/sdX <path_to_image>.img
- Run test disk on it selecting the partitions as necessary
testdisk <path_to_image>.img
If the disk has a complicated partition layout, or more effort is required to find the correct partition you can also mount parts of the disk.
-
create an image of the entire disk (not a partition) using ddrescue
ddrescue -d /dev/sdX <path_to_image>.img
-
Mount the image as a loopback device with the appropriate offset
losetup --offset <some_offset_like_8192> --show -v -r -f -P <path_to_image>.img
this will mount individual partitions:loop58 7:58 0 465.8G 1 loop ├─loop58p1 259:7 0 1.5G 1 part ├─loop58p2 259:8 0 450.6G 1 part └─loop58p3 259:9 0 13.7G 1 part
-
Then operate testdisk on whatever partition you want.
All that said there are a lot of variables here and things don’t always work perfectly. I hope you do find a way to recover them.
What version of kde? I haven’t tried it, or read about it beyond the changelog, however the latest beta release says that it supports RDP to connect to plasma desktops which is quite an interesting development if it works the way it sounds like it does:
For the “from anywhere” component you could use a vpn, but if you’re looking for a simple solution with zero configuration than nomachine or rustdesk seem more appropriate. Just thought the RDP support was worth sharing.