

You don’t need to but #1 could be a bit easier if you prefer multiple torrent clients/instances for organization. qBittorrent / Deluge can run multiple instances so you could have like qBittorrent “A” instance pointing to your internal SSD and qBittorrent “B” instance pointing to your external HDD. That’s just a quick example but I’m sure Transmission and other torrent clients can do the same.
The only tricky bit with multiple torrent clients is that they’d each need their own incoming connection port if you intend to be fully connectable (port forwarded). That may not be feasible if you’re using a VPN that only gives you 1 port forward but otherwise it’s doable, depends on your setup.



Like the other comment mentioned I’d try https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec first.
Just a heads up with proper data recovery it’s usually a good idea to dump an image of the media card to your drive and do any data recovery attempts against that image, not the media card itself. I would usually use ddrescue for that but you’ll probably be okay with standard dd too if the card itself is fine (as you said the deleted files were user error, not a failing card).
PS - You should definitely not use the media card in the camera until you’re done with recovery attempts, the more you use it the less likely you’ll recover anything off it.