Need to recover files after 18.3 32bit to 18.3 64bit installation

[ScottyB0y]

Toshiba Satellite A505, Intel Core-2 Duo CPU, 4GB RAM, 300GB HDD, has been running exclusively Linux Mint 32bit since early 2012. I upgraded from 18.2 32bit to 18.3 32bit just to get the improved Backup Tool in order to do a DVD backup of my home directory. The backup onto DVD appeared to work with no problems, but after successfully doing a fresh install on 18.3 64bit "Sylvia", I attempted to use Backup Tool to restore the files. No go. The DVD R disk showed as "blank DVD", containing nothing, for several attempts to restore.

After learning this, I stopped everything with respect to this laptop. I only installed what came with the ISO, nothing else. Any suggestions as to how (and if) I can recover the data files? Any and all help will be appreciated. (BTW, my only reason for changing from 32 to 64bit is to use RAWTherapee to work with Fujifilm RAF files; RAWTherapee is one of the few open source RAW tools that support RAF files.)

[kukamuumuka]

The DVD R disk showed as "blank DVD", containing nothing, for several attempts to restore.

Copy DVD as an image and mount that image using disk-mounter. An example:

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dd if=/dev/sr0 of=backup.img

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apt install gnome-disk-image-mounter

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gnome-disk-image-mounter

[ScottyB0y]

I followed the procedure given by administrollaatori, above, and found that the backup DVD contains no files whatsoever. Is there software available which can retrieve the files from the newly formatted HDD, so long as they have not been overwritten?

[jimallyn]

TestDisk/PhotoRec will recover anything that hasn't been overwritten. Get it here:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

It is available for most operating systems, and is also available on many "live" rescue CDs:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd