Recovery after formatting

After accidentally formatting the wrong SSD my first course of action was to try a recovery using Recuva. Recuva did manage to find and apparently recover 4.943 files, but only 224 jpgs were readable. Most jpgs, and all NEF/DNG-files with their cab-files are not recognized by Windows Photo Viewer or Photoshop CS6 and cannot be opened. No tiff-files were recovered.

Is there an alternative solution, or can I just say goodbye to the files that were not backed up?

Recuva can't repair files; it can only recover the files exactly as it's reading them.

As such, there's no options in Recuva to change how it recovers the files. If it detected and attempted recovery of the files, then it's done all it can. (SSDs are notoriously hard to recover from.)

You may be able to use something like IrfanView: https://www.irfanview.com/ to open the image files; it can work around some kinds of damage to open the files, wherein they can then be resaved 'cleanly'.

I see a few tools claiming to be able to 'fix' NEF files like: https://exiftool.org/fix_corrupted_nef.html or https://www.nefrepair.com/ but I've not made use of these tools (or indeed the NEF or DNG formats at all), so I'm unable to offer more information about them than their existence.

OK. Thanks for the advice. I’ve contacted a data recovery specialist to see if anything can be done. He shares your view on SSDs.

As JohnCCleaner says, Recuva users in the past have found that Irfanview can open 'slightly damaged' recovered files that other viewers can't.

And then you can resave them as 'whole' files again.

As Irfanview is free then it's worth a try, John gives the link in his post.