File and/or disk recovery can be a challenge. The Testdisk program identified in a later paragraph is a tool that requires patience. There are non-destructive options for learning how it may or may not help with your problem. Testdisk definitely requires you to RTFM (Read The Fine Manual) and then play with the options to determine if it may lead you down the path of recovering data. It is the only free software we have found that offers data recovery features. The source is available here: https://git.cgsecurity.org/cgit/testdisk/ Reading the source code might add to your knowledge about disks and file systems. The author of Testdisk put the source under an Open Source license. After scanning the source a bit, it is evident a lot of effort has been invested and the results warrant some form of compensation, should you choose to use the software. If you find the program provides some benefit to you, consider providing compensation to the author.

Careful… It is a command line tool. Reading the documentation and experimentation will be necessary. Here is another reference to the documentation.

Reference: https://www.cgsecurity.org/

Then goto: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

This item was added after attempts to recover data from a disk that had lots of reallocation failures on an NTFS partition. GetDataBack was able to discover and/or use the “mirror/secondary” MFT and show me the data on the disk. Wow!! It did “take a while”, for this program to deal with or tolerate the non trivial number of bad sectors in the MFT, but the end result was IMPRESSIVE. Today's opinion…. If you do not have backups, this tool might be helpful

GetDataBack is “not free” as is the typical recommendations in this wiki. However, I tried it. A good UI and it found/dealt with bad MFT corruption., that included bad disk sectors. You do not need to buy a license until after you try it. If it works and shows you the data (Graphical File Explorer User Interface) then you can opt to purchase a license. You need to buy a license to copy the data it finds to another place..