Recover data from a system that won't boot anymore

[xdiego]

Hello all,

I have been using RPI4 without any problems for some time now, until I really needed the sd card. I copied all of its contents -- boot and recovery -- to my pc and then formatted it so that I could use it for something else.

Today, I formatted the sd card and did a clean install (noobs). The clean os booted right away. My plan was working until I tried to restore the original backed up files by overwriting each sd card partition (boot and recovery) with them -- looks like that is not a viable option

My issue is this: how can I recover a folder I had on my desktop in my old system that won't boot anymore? I tried to browse the backed up files with no luck. I do not really care if I have to start over with a clean os, but I certainly need to recover some files from the old one. Is it possible?

[klricks]

The RECOVERY partition contains a copy of the Raspbian OS which is used to do a fresh restore of the OS. It does not include any user data, files or folders.
Your files would have been on a Linux type partition which cannot be seen by a Windows computer and cannot be copied with simple copy commands or drag -n- drop.
So you copied what you did not need and didn't copy what you needed.

If you formatted the entire SD card then you are out of luck.

Next time Rapsbian has a SD card copy utility that can make copies of the running OS onto a 2nd SD card or USB drive.

[xdiego]

That's very unfortunate. Thanks for the reply