Hacking Data recovery from a format?

noreason

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Long story short someone formatted my external drive with almost all my games and most importantly my saves on it. The format was done from the Wii U system menu and the drive was pulled right after it happened. No new data was written to it...

I've worked with recovery on other file systems before but I'm not sure of any available for the Wii U?

I tried dumping with wfsdump but it just dumped the empty directories...

Any suggestions? Are there ways to extract raw data? If I could just get one save file back... sigh.
 

Pokezuculento

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Long story short someone formatted my external drive with almost all my games and most importantly my saves on it. The format was done from the Wii U system menu and the drive was pulled right after it happened. No new data was written to it...

I've worked with recovery on other file systems before but I'm not sure of any available for the Wii U?

I tried dumping with wfsdump but it just dumped the empty directories...

Any suggestions? Are there ways to extract raw data? If I could just get one save file back... sigh.
The data can be corrupted, i can not think anything else... Send images to see more in detail.
Also you can try to reformat again, but the saves and games... I dont think if they can be recovered without a backup...
 

noreason

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I'd imagine the data is still there and just fine, assuming the wii u "quick formats" similarly to other file systems. The problem now is the indexing of where the files are located on the disk is gone. I'm trying to find tools and information on how to actually locate the files on the drive.

I have decrypted the drive and I can see what looks like bits and pieces of legit wii u data, but that is about as far as I have gotten. I have backup saves of zelda botw that I'm using to try and compare. The problem is, i don't really think data is written on the drive in perfect sequential order, so piecing anything back together would be impossible for my level of knowledge. I'm going to keep digging though.
 

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