How to fix a corrupted .txt file After my hard drive was formatted by a mistake, I used a data rescue software to recover some files, but when I tried to open my notes and bookmarks files, it just showed weird characters like these below:


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Given a uniform distribution of bytes in your file, and analyzing the data for entropy, the file looks random. The entropy (for 1-tuples) is 7.61 Shannon. This is really near 8 Shannon, the redundancy in your data is insignificant und looks like random error. Of course your file is way too small for proper analysis, but it looks as if


Your file was compressed before, which is unlikely if the file extension was txt and no (known to me) compression header is present.
Your file was encrypted.
You chose to secure erase the disk while formatting.


I think it's most likely the third option. No way to restore it.