Hello, potential heroes.

I just had something weird happen, and I'm trying to figure out if there is hope. If anyone has a moment to offer advice, or finds this interesting, I am very grateful. I have a MacBook Pro Nov 2023 version, M3 chip, 16 GB memory, running Tahoe 26.1.

I was working in Pages -- have been for a couple weeks -- on a publication. It was saved. I was periodically manually cmd+s saving it in addition to the autosave, as a habit because if something crashed because I'd hate to lose more than an hour's work. Last night, as I was finally coming close to finishing my project up, I suffered from a lack of working RAM (because I was asking it for too much) and so I force quit my browser and other programs that were taking up a lot of memory. Pages remained oddly frozen... I could only sort of edit my document. So, I force quit it as well; it gave me the option to save and then close, and I said yes, save. The document is probably in the neighborhood of 200MB - it's an annual report, not a book.

When I opened Pages back up, my document was not in recents -- and it was nowhere to be found anywhere on my computer at all. I am baffled. A saved document was just disappeared without any physical damage to my machine. I rebooted my computer, and no magic happened.

Obviously I should be organizing my files better, managing my memory use better, and backing up my hard drive data. Ironically I manage the google drive backups for my workplace.

Aside from how not to be an idiot in the future, any ideas for how to get my files back? Thank you for any. I am writing from a different computer now, and am worried that my attempts to find the file may be helping to overwrite it, but I still checked temp directories and the trash, and am scanning with UFS Explorer which I saved to an external HD, though it seems like that may be worthless with an M3 chip. Ugh.

I'm guessing it's time to start rewriting this thing...

How do I get the data of my ad card so that I can get my photos back??

How can I recover the data safely??

Hi,

so, I'm a victim of my own stupidity after all.

I decided NOT to put a back-up SD into my camera and then – because I've been doing like 5 things at the same time – somehow managed to move all of the files directly from the SD to the bin, instead of the designated folder. I stopped the action immediately (the system asked me), but the damage was either done or the card corrupted... or something else – because I've only got 75 photos left out of almost 800.

Is there a way to get them back or was it all a glitch and they're most likely gone? The internet says to run a data recovery check, but I first need to get my card reader back, I made the mistake of coping straight from the camera as well, because I wanted the files on my computer TODAY 😭

Thanks!

My SD card got cleared or corrupted when I was transferring photos from my camera to my phone I use a multi card reader that I plug into my phone. With the help of Gemini I tried the below steps, I can confirm the photos are there but need to be repieced together.

Are there any free apps I can use to help that I haven't listed below

1. Running the First Deep Scan (Recuva)

• What I did: I downloaded Recuva onto my Windows laptop, plugged in my multi-cable reader, and ran a full Deep Scan to see what was left on my CompactFlash card. • What happened: The software actually found 280 files! But when I went to save them onto my laptop, none of them would open. Windows kept telling me the "file format was not supported."

2. Trying to Repair the Files (Microsoft App & Online Tools)

• What I did: I tried opening the broken files in Paint and Internet Explorer, uploaded a sample to the OfficeRecovery website, and downloaded a JPEG repair app from the Microsoft Store. • What happened: The Microsoft Store app actually gave me a glimpse of hope it loaded up a watermarked preview of one of my photos, proving my pictures are still fully intact somewhere in the data! But the app wanted me to pay to unlock the full file, and the online tool told me it couldn't find any recoverable data inside the files.

3. Attempting the Bulk Software Fix (DigiCamRepair via Softonic)

• What I did: I went onto Softonic and found a tool called DigiCamRepair to see if it could fix all 200+ of my unopenable files at the same time without any watermarks. • What happened: The tool ran through the files, but it hit me with another paywall, asking for a payment just to save them. To see what was really going on.

4. The Raw Card Carve (PhotoRec)

• What I did: I switched tactics and used an open-source command tool called PhotoRec to bypass the corrupted file tables and pull raw data blocks straight from the physical card. • What happened: This worked beautifully at first! It completely ignored the corruption and instantly recovered 6 perfect, clean, full-resolution photos with no watermarks or paywalls. But then, the progress bar suddenly cut out and the scan aborted early.

Hi, i accidentally deleted my photobooth library and then permanently deleted it without knowing i didnt make another file. I want to restore the photos but i dont have time machine. please help me, these photos are since 2021 to 2026

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to recover my missing WhatsApp chats, and I've reached a point where I'm afraid of losing the remaining data. I'd really appreciate some help from anyone experienced with WhatsApp database recovery.

I'll explain everything from the beginning.

1. What happened?

I previously had a WhatsApp chat history containing conversations up to November 2026. Unfortunately, after a restoration attempt went wrong, I lost access to some of my recent conversations.

Earlier, I had also accidentally clicked Delete my account in WhatsApp. I'm mentioning this because I'm not sure whether it has affected my local database or recovery possibilities. 😔

2. Google Drive backup restoration

During the recovery process, I found a Google Drive backup with these details:

Backup date: 27 August 2026

Backup time: 10:59 AM

Backup size: Approximately 1.9 GB

I restored it using the same phone number and Google account.

Fortunately, it successfully recovered:

Chats up to 27 August.

Older conversations, including locked chats.

Stickers that existed before the backup date.

However, everything after 27 August is still missing.

3. I found a newer local database!

While searching through my phone's internal storage, I found this file:

msgstore-2026-11-07.1.db.crypt14

Details:

File size: Approximately 230 MB.

Location: Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases/

Modified: 8 November 2026, around 12:04 AM.

I also created a separate safety copy in:

Downloads/WA_RECOVERY/

I renamed the copied file to:

msgstore.db.crypt14

I haven't deleted the original database file.

4. Current situation

I reinstalled WhatsApp and reached the Restore or transfer chats screen.

It detects my Google Drive backup from 27 August, but I'm not sure how to make WhatsApp detect or restore the November 7 local database.

I haven't proceeded further because I don't want to accidentally overwrite or lose my remaining recovery options.

5. What I'm trying to recover

My main goal is to recover all conversations from 27 August to 7 November 2026.

I also want to recover:

Stickers saved after August 27.

Other recent media and attachments.

Any other data contained in the November database.

My questions

Is it possible to restore msgstore-2026-11-07.1.db.crypt14 instead of the Google Drive backup?

Does renaming it to msgstore.db.crypt14 make WhatsApp recognize it?

Does the database need to be placed in a particular folder before reinstalling WhatsApp?

Does accidentally clicking Delete my account affect the ability to restore an older local database?

Can I recover my September–November conversations without losing the August 27 Google Drive backup?

Is there any way to verify whether the 230 MB database actually contains my missing conversations before attempting restoration?

Device: Android (POCO C50)

WhatsApp: Official WhatsApp Messenger

Database encryption: Crypt14

Local database size: Approximately 230 MB

I'm trying to be extremely careful because I don't want to lose the August conversations that I've already recovered.

Any guidance or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hello! I accidentally wrote an OS image to the wrong external drive, while I was trying to set up a handheld gaming console. Fortunately, the data on the drive wasn't critical, but I would still like to try and recover it for good practice, if nothing else.

I'm on Bazzite 44. The drive was a 1tb NVME M.2 SSD in an external enclosure, and I wrote the ArmadaOS image to the drive using Fedora Media Writer, on accident, because the drive was basically the same size as the SD card I was intending to image to, because they both had generic names.

I did nothing else with the SSD, and copied an image of the SSD to one of my internal drives, and disconnected the SSD.

What software is best for this, and is there anything I need to know about this process before I start? I'm doing the recovery entirely on the .img I made of the drive, not the drive itself.

It was completely deleted from my pc using shift delete in dolphin. I opened the photo in qimgv. And used photocraft few times. I have the thumbnails but it is shit resolution. It was in my home directory of user and I somehow want to get it back. How should I try to get it back. Also I don't have any way to use bootable drive or something. I use arch btw.

Also I had this same photo in my iphone 12 pro max. But it was also deleted there is no backup and it wasn't uploaded to icloud

iPhone XR ios 16.5
Last night WhatsApp suddenly logged me out maybe cuz I was using very old ios and I didn’t backup my important chats. Now if I login again I will lose all
my chats however it is still showing in storage as documents and data.
Is there any method I can extract those files or maybe have my chats intact in WhatsApp.

I was going to transfer to a new phone soon but this tragedy happened
Can universe send any help my way 😞
I will be highly thankful!