I currently have "MYI" and "frm" files of a really important database. When I use the "strings" command on the "MYI" file I can actually see readable data and the "frm" data seems to be fine. Is there any way that I can use these two files to maybe recreate the "MYD" file? My end goal here is to view the database or execute SQL commands on it. So anything that helps with that would be fine by me.
I tried to view the database in XAMPP but it seems to be corrupted. (Because I'm missing the "MYD" file of course)
The .frm file is for table metadata. .MYD and .MYI files only pertain to the MyISAM storage engine. The .MYD file has whole rows, stored in the order they were inserted (roughly). The .MYI file has index data structures.
So the .MYI file only includes some of the columns of your table — those that were in the indexes defined for the table. Columns that were in the data but not part of any index are not in the .MYI file. It's typical that only a few columns of a table are indexed. So at best, if you were able to recover strings from the .MYI file, it would lack many of the columns that were in the .MYD file.
I don't know of any tool to "recover" data from .MYI files. It is an internal file format, generally readable only by the MyISAM storage engine code. You can read about the details of the format here: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/internals/en/the-myi-file.html
You would be better off restoring data from your most backup. If you don't have a backup, then may just be a learning experience about the importance of making backups.
