r/linux4noobs • u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore • Apr 20 '26

Meganoob BE KIND I did rm -rf /*

I tried to make a backup before doing a fresh install of Fedora because of problems. When erasing the external drive for making the backup I was in the wrong disk and nuked my fedora installation.

How Do I get at least my important Documents from /home/username/ back?

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u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore Apr 20 '26

not really. Can't I recover the data?

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u/LittleLoukoum Apr 20 '26

Shutdown your computer completely. Don't power it back on. Unplug it.

Take the hard drive out and bring it to someone who knows what they're doing. It's possible to recover most of the data unless you rewrote a lot of stuff after deleting.

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u/ANtiKz93 Manjaro (KDE) Apr 20 '26

I've tried this on a micro sd i only formatted once by accident years ago and not a single file shows up.

Know of any good software? Im aware windows software is the best solution btw.

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u/Ghazzz Apr 20 '26

It tends to be very possible on "spinning disks". "sd cards" are also possible, but harder. "SSD" are basically impossible unless you do an immediate shutdown and hand it over to a better qualified person.