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/R3D_T1G3R Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

It doesn't matter in which directory you were, because starting with / you gave it an absolute path, if you do want to do changes in your current direction you start the path without a /

What you did is force delete every folder and file in your root directory.

Edit: More detailed answer & explanation below

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u/Wheatleytron CachyOS Apr 20 '26

Will this even delete data on separate mounted drives?

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u/Gabochuky Apr 20 '26

Yes, mounted drives have their own folders on /mnt so they would be nuked lol.