accidentally restored a 1tb HDD to a 16gb thumb drive...

[Dmitri]

what software or process should I use?

Go with Raise Data Recovery:
http://www.ufsexplorer.com/rdr_index.php

It's more than affordable and fully suits your needs. Remember what file system the drive was using and download the corresponding edition for that FS.

You'll be able to perform a scan in trial mode and to buy the license after previewing the results (data, which has been physically overwritten, is lost).

Be sure to connect the patient drive as a second one to some PC and do not save any data onto it, neither the recovery software, nor the recovered data, even if OS recognizes the drive anyhow.

[drHDD]

I am not recommend Raise Data Recovery. It is very good program if you play with linux FS, but it is not good on easy cases like this. I would recommend R-Studio. And If you used NTFS on your HDD, more luckely file records are gone, so you only can get files by extensions without names and etc.

[pcimage]

I am not recommend Raise Data Recovery. It is very good program if you play with linux FS, but it is not good on easy cases like this. I would recommend R-Studio. And If you used NTFS on your HDD, more luckely file records are gone, so you only can get files by extensions without names and etc.

I think you're getting confused between "Raise Data Recovery" and "Reiser FS"

[drHDD]

No, I am not.

[fzabkar]

Double-click one of the folders. Now what do you see?

[labtech]

0Kb means that there is no content. You may just be looking at an empty file structure. Click around and check for 0Kb consistency to get a better idea.

[kaxi]

Probably what you are looking at is not the files you want, just the USB stick filesystem (maybe you had a copy of your files in there?). If scanning didn't find any NTFS filesystem then most probably the original disk filesystem was completely overwritten - very natural if the first 16GB of the partition where overwriten. The last chance to get any files will be a raw logical recovery by file type, loosing filenames and directory structures.