accidental disk format. please help!

[luv2liv]

I often use "Win32 Disk Imager" to write IMG file to the raspberry pi SD card, usually on F drive.

today i goofed up and chose the G drive, which is my ext usb back up drive. immediately after 3 seconds, i realized i chose the WRONG drive, i hit the cancel button. but it was too late (i think). the drive's name "extra drive" is still there. but i cannot access the drive. Windows 7 wants me to format the drive.
is there any way i can recover the drive with every documents in it? thanks!

error looks something like this

when i hit Cancel, i get:
G:\ is not accessible.
The volume does not contain a recognized file system....

 

[luv2liv]

after searching, i see there are options such as:
https://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/recover-formatted-partition.htm
http://www.eassos.com/eassos-recovery-free.php
https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva/features/recovery-from-damaged-or-formatted-disks
https://www.cleverfiles.com/download-disk-drill-windows.html

I have heard good things from Recuva by CCleaner so i will try that first. not sure how these applications are free.

 

[C1]

Easeus as I recall is techniclly not free. It is trial and allows free recovery of 1GB limit.

Eassos claims it can handle unformatting and that it is available freeware.
http://www.eassos.com/blog/how-to-unformat-a-hard-drive-in-windows-10-8-7/

I would attempt to analyze the disk using "TestDisk" which is known freeware. Just go slowly. If I recall correctly, it should have an option to repair, replace or rebuild the MFT.

 

[luv2liv]

Easeus as I recall is techniclly not free. It is trial and allows free recovery of 1GB limit.

Eassos claims it can handle unformatting and that it is available freeware.
http://www.eassos.com/blog/how-to-unformat-a-hard-drive-in-windows-10-8-7/

I would attempt to analyze the disk using "TestDisk" which is known freeware. Just go slowly. If I recall correctly, it should have an option to repair, replace or rebuild the MFT.

is this the TestDisk that you mentioned? https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

 

[C1]

Ya, that's one of the files I have. In the past Ive successfully used the older version 6.14 for disk repair (eg, both data recovery as well as repair/restore of disk redered to RAW).

"TestDisk" is a well known and respected freeware. It's a bit criptic which is probably an argument against it, but just go slow (ie, read thoroughly the data screens for the options available at each major step).

When TestDisk scans/analyses, it does not write or do damage to the HDD files. Before anything is attempted to be written or modified on the affected media, TestDisk will warn you.

 

[luv2liv]

oh that is great! thank you.

n looks like im not the first one to mess up with Win32DiskImager for the raspberry pi. lol
https://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=1170

 

[luv2liv]

i booted up today with the USB drive connected. for whatever reason, i can open the drive but it is only partial and none of the files i can recognize from before this mess.

in Windows Explorer, the drive shows up as FAT 41.5 MB free of 55.9MB.
I know for sure it was NTFS. total 4TB, with about 80GB free space left . using TestDisk now with Deep Search. will update once is it done 100%. right now it is still stuck at 00% as seen in screenshot above

 

[alexruiz]

I have used file scavenger before. It saved my butt more than once
It can read from unallocated disk space
Give it a try.

 

[luv2liv]

i went ahead and format the unallocated disk space to NTFS. then used Recuva to recover.
i think Recuva recovered all the files. BUT the names are nonsense. example: tax2009.xlsx would look like 49382.xlsx. and for whatever reason, some file names are fine. the full 4TB ext hard drive took about 20hrs to recover about 2TB, I did not bother recovering all the data.

luckily i use backblaze.com ($5 per month for unlimited backup) to back up to their cloud service. they charge $190 to send me the hard drive with everything, it was via Fedex 2 biz day delivery. backblaze will refund if i send their drive back within 30 days. so all i have to do is pay about $10 to ship their drive back.