hard drive recovery

[trailertrash]

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I had an awkward moment and my back up hard drive is no longer readable. I did not reformat it nor did I knowingly erase/delete anything. It happened when I was attempting to install Puppy Linux (frugal install). I've done this hundreds of times before. Can't explain why it happened. pisses me off royally. I should have known better.

The drive once had Manjaro Cinnamon installed. The files in question are a lifetime of personal photographs (mostly .jpg) and a few dozen Libre Office documents (.odt). Not that it should matter but the drive is a 4TB IDE SATA type/

This is NOT a case where one can simply mount and grab files. I wish it were. The drive is no longer mountable. It is not recognized. I tried Gparted to see what was detected. Nothing. A blank drive. No format. Nothing.

I downloaded a sample recovery program on my Windows 'puter and ran it in trial mode. It scanned and found my files. I could buy this program and have success but first I'd like to try it myself.

Anyone know of a Linux program that will restore files from a hard drive? Before I run to a computer repair shop with a huge bag of money and my dead drive I'd like to try recovering myself.

Any ideas????


After I wrote this post I discovered R-Linux delete recovery and am running a scan that will continue until tomorrow. Hopefully all my files will be then be identified for retrieval.