I accidentally formatted hdd partition that contained a vault, and it was not backed up (yeah, I know, I know…).
By the time I realised that that’s where the vault files were located, that partition had an OS installed, deleted, installed again, with creation of two EFI-partitions, so there’s a chance that data is already overwritten and not recoverable from it’s original location. I’ll keep trying, though.
It surprised that when I first launched the program after the wipe (I didn’t know the data was gone yet), it seemingly had no memory of any vault existence - no errors, nothing, just offered me to create my ‘first vault’. obsidian.json file also did not contain any records of the vault address, name, id, etc. Since there was no records of the vault in the program, Snapshots were not an option, either.
Still, when I was looking through \AppData\Roaming\obsidian files, I noticed significant volumes of cache, and even found parts of my notes in files like the ones you can find in folder \AppData\Roaming\obsidian\IndexedDB\app_obsidian.md_0.indexeddb.blob\.
That led me to a guess that maybe there’s a way to al least partly retrieve the vault’s content from the collected cache - list of files, maybe some of the text and attachments. Cache files creation dates are of a time prior to partition format. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience is such matters so am not sure where to start.
The lost data is not matter of life and death, but still matter to me and I’d be very grateful for any suggestions.
Things I have tried
HDD partition recovery is in progress, but might end up fruitless
Without knowing the intrinsic of the cache/indexdb structure, my experience with computers in general indicates that you need to count your losses.
You could possibly, using some indexDB tools, get a list of all the files which were present in your vault, and if you’re lucky that includes the links to other files as well (at least the backlinks) but I reckon that most of the actual content of your vault is lost.
In order to preserve the most of this data if you indeed want to venture down that road of recovering those partial records, you should not install Obsidian or start Obsidian before you’ve moved/copied the folders you see could potentially hold the data, aka the /AppData/Roaming/obsidian/ folder for sure.
Regarding the actual contents of your vault, if they’re on a partition you’ve erased, and overwritten with new partitions and installed an OS on top of it, there is a very theoretic possibility to get some professionals to actually recover that data, but that would cost you a lot. And I do mean a lot. So for normal people, and even for computer engineers/nerds/…, it’s not a viable option to try to recover such data. Sorry.
Indeed, my chances of full recovery are probably vague, but I’ll strive to get back as much as possible in this situation. I’ll look into the ‘indexDB tools’ topic and see where it gets me.
I also contacted a high-profile company specializing in data recovery and described them the situation, to see the price list if nothing else
I’m not sure where you live, or what price ranges you operate in, but the last time I checked a similar thing here in Norway, it would range up towards 10 000 USD… And this was quite some time ago, so I’d not be surprised if that figure is low in todays market…
I currently reside in Georgia (country, not US state). There’s jsut one company with a clean room in the Caucasus region that I could find mentions of, so I contacted them.
I am guessing the service won’t be cheap in any case, but qualified labor pricings between one of the most expensive countries of Europe and one of the cheapest ones should be significant !
