That might be bad and good. USB hard disks have risk of file loss if removed at bad time.
Although its value depends on some settings, there’s a Safely Remove Hardware button.
Good news is there’s another place to try to recover some dlist file, even slightly old ones.
Concern, as usual, is what might have overwritten it, but dlist as last file has best chance.
Windows File Recovery describes that concept without a sales pitch, but many tools exist.
Is even latest dblock the full size of the earlier? That can be a sign that newer got lost.
You can check the pattern on earlier backups too. Chances are last dblock is smaller.
Between that and the next backup is the dlist, or if retention is low, where it once was.
Then there should be a defective hard drive around. Sometimes these are recoverable.
This may take a special service or software. I recovered most of a drive with ddrescue.
That is free, but prices and effectiveness vary. You might want to consult a repair shop.
They might be able to attach it to a USB adapter then plug it in, but then so could you.
If you have drive encryption on, that will add another hurdle that may need expert help.
If was a head crash that’s damaged the surface, it’s very specialized – and very costly.
There was nothing to try. You misread my statement that Duplicati should not be able to delete every last dlist file, even if one asks for it or severely misconfigures retention (still not reported).
Basically, that’s the safety mechanism that I hope you didn’t defeat while doing actual backups.
It sounds, though, like you added it thinking it would fix things after-the-fact. It just avoids harm.
Where harm came from is unknown given the lack of any logs, and no details on backup config.
I gave you many options, and just gave you more. None of them are pretty, but they’re there.
- Try data recovery on the USB drive. This hopes lost dlist file can be software-recovered.
- Try data recovery on the failed drive. Might be easy, might be hard, depending on failure.
- Decide if you want to try to recover nameless files and look through them for importance.
Files are not entirely nameless. Common file types are identified by TrID - File Identifier, however you’d have to add the first part of the name. Reassembly is by my Python script.
Using recovery tool with missing dlist files has the software bundle and more description.
A repair shop will probably have an opinion on data recovery. I’m not sure I trust all the stuff the Internet sellers have for sale. All of this is researchable, but a trusted expert might be best way.