I accidentally quick formatted a 2TB WD Green (WD20EZRX, MBR, NTFS) from Windows 11 Pro, I unplugged it immediately after noticing. Since then it has only been connected on Linux and has always been kept unmounted. No data has been written to it since the format.
TestDisk found the partition but the directory tree was empty. R-Studio after a full scan found the partition (Recognized5, 1.82TB NTFS) with the complete folder structure intact; all folder names, sizes and dates are correct, over 1TB of data across nested folders. The problem is R-Studio's full license is around €80.
I'm on Linux right now. Is there a free or cheaper alternative that can handle NTFS recovery when the MFT is reconstructable? I have seen DMDE mentioned being cheaper here
(https://old.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki)
but I've been wondering if there were better alternatives for my situation.
(Also I don't have a spare drive where to image my drive to unfortunately, just one where I will copy my files to)