Associate
- Joined
- 29 Mar 2012
- Posts
- 91
Hi all,
Hoping I can get some help but expect my data is lost... hours of DVD burning for Plex and years of family photos
I got a new PC this week and wanted to wipe old one and reinstall windows so I can sell it (2600K, still worth something!).
I used the msft tool to create Windows media and select my USB HDD (with all the data) to create the image, not knowing that it can't tell the difference between a flash drive and usb stick. I was just expecting it to plonk it on the disk as a folder. Thick, I know.
First sign of trouble is when it asks me to format drive F to continue halfway through the process. Getting worried I said no, and it went back to building the media. I still didn't cancel it though as I thought if I said no, but it's carrying on then it must be clever enough to know i don't want to format.
Well, progress gets to 100% and it says again; you must format drive F etc. In full panic mode I press no, but the process completes and the new drive pops up. 32GB FAT32 and the rest (nearly 3GB unformatted/unpartitioned).
So now the data is gone, or at least it looks that way.
100% my fault for trying this and not understanding what will happen, though I did say no twice to formatting!
Has anybody got any ideas how I might get the data back? I have tried miniTool partition wizard free and to be honest, I don't understand it. It is showing most of the drive as unpartioned though, with just that 32GB FAT 32 partition.
Gutted, the family photos are lost and it took me forever to burn the movies.
Yes I know I should have had back-up/mirrored drives etc but I didn't
Just hoping some kind soul can give me hope. Though I expect there is none...
Any suggestions on getting the data back much appreciated. Could there be something in the fact I said no to formatting? Maybe it's done something different because of that, despite the evidence of only seeing one small partition...
Hoping I can get some help but expect my data is lost... hours of DVD burning for Plex and years of family photos
I got a new PC this week and wanted to wipe old one and reinstall windows so I can sell it (2600K, still worth something!).
I used the msft tool to create Windows media and select my USB HDD (with all the data) to create the image, not knowing that it can't tell the difference between a flash drive and usb stick. I was just expecting it to plonk it on the disk as a folder. Thick, I know.
First sign of trouble is when it asks me to format drive F to continue halfway through the process. Getting worried I said no, and it went back to building the media. I still didn't cancel it though as I thought if I said no, but it's carrying on then it must be clever enough to know i don't want to format.
Well, progress gets to 100% and it says again; you must format drive F etc. In full panic mode I press no, but the process completes and the new drive pops up. 32GB FAT32 and the rest (nearly 3GB unformatted/unpartitioned).
So now the data is gone, or at least it looks that way.
100% my fault for trying this and not understanding what will happen, though I did say no twice to formatting!
Has anybody got any ideas how I might get the data back? I have tried miniTool partition wizard free and to be honest, I don't understand it. It is showing most of the drive as unpartioned though, with just that 32GB FAT 32 partition.
Gutted, the family photos are lost and it took me forever to burn the movies.
Yes I know I should have had back-up/mirrored drives etc but I didn't
Just hoping some kind soul can give me hope. Though I expect there is none...
Any suggestions on getting the data back much appreciated. Could there be something in the fact I said no to formatting? Maybe it's done something different because of that, despite the evidence of only seeing one small partition...
