Recover deleted files EXT4

[ActionParsnip]

Remember. a 1Tb disk is dirt cheap and would enable you to recover data easily and quickly. Even a manual copy and paste every now and then is enough

[HermanAB]

Err... If you are working on a PHD (lots of invested time and effort), then you should take your PC to an expert data recovery company and not try to do it yourself. The first thing you should do, is unplug it from the wall and stop using it, since using it, overwrites old erased files on the disk - the ones you want to restore.

[TheFu]

For the future, tools like Back-in-Time will take hourly snapshots (really rsync + hardlinks), then selectively remove those "snapshots" as time moves forward. You'll have 48 hourly snapshots (the last two days), then 1 snapshot per day for the last week, then 1 snapshot per week for the last month, then 1 snapshot per month for the last year. You get the point. I may not be exactly correct, but there are definitely hourly snapshots created and selectively removed over time.
Perfect for people doing important work daily that is kept in the HOME. Back-in-Time wasn't so great for doing system backups, but for end-user files in a HOME directory, it wasn't bad.

Because these snapshots use hardlinks, the amount of storage needed for many snapshot versions is actually tiny.
I set this up for my Mom's system and she used it for a few years (RIP).

Having backups is much better than not having them and losing data, as you know. Even better if that process is easily automated.