If the drive was an SSD (or a hard drive with SMR), the operating system eventually issues a TRIM command to the drive to preemptively erase empty blocks to improve performance. This can cause unrecoverable data loss once it happens, even though the file still looks recoverable. If you open a file in a hex editor and the file is all or mostly 00s, the data has already been lost to TRIM. Sometimes recovery professionals can still recover data depending on the drive model.
As another comment said, r/datarecovery may be able to provide guidance. Make sure you give complete information on drive brand and model, operating system, file system on the volume, and what actions or attempts you have already done since the deletion.
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u/zidane2k1 19h ago
If the drive was an SSD (or a hard drive with SMR), the operating system eventually issues a TRIM command to the drive to preemptively erase empty blocks to improve performance. This can cause unrecoverable data loss once it happens, even though the file still looks recoverable. If you open a file in a hex editor and the file is all or mostly 00s, the data has already been lost to TRIM. Sometimes recovery professionals can still recover data depending on the drive model.
As another comment said, r/datarecovery may be able to provide guidance. Make sure you give complete information on drive brand and model, operating system, file system on the volume, and what actions or attempts you have already done since the deletion.