I accidentally quick formatted my 2TB HDD PLEASE HELP!

Mik3 · 2 Jul 2012 at 10:27

I've used testdisk to recover lost partitions before, I'm not sure if it will work for formatted drives but its worth a look.

Syther101 · 2 Jul 2012 at 10:36

Mik3 said:
I've used testdisk to recover lost partitions before, I'm not sure if it will work for formatted drives but its worth a look.

Had this running over night, like you said because it was a format. Even just a quick one it doesn't seem to work. Trying active@ I delete but I have a feeling this will wield the same results. A massive dump of unnamed files but I guess that will have to do and I'll have to shift through them all :/

doyll · 2 Jul 2012 at 11:10

It's a bad deal any way you look at it. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the files it "saves" are damaged and unusable.

Syther101 · 2 Jul 2012 at 19:11

Ok so after using Active@ It managed to find my $MFT file which is 158Mb so I have reason the believe it's still in tack. Is thier a way to get the system to replace the current empty MFT with this one?

ANDARIAL · 2 Jul 2012 at 21:47

minitool partition wizard
recover partition section
worked for me a few months back when i raided 2 hdds by mistake :eek:

azibux1 · 6 Jul 2012 at 22:29

Never told me you done this :O

What's the situation like at the moment then?

Syther101 · 6 Jul 2012 at 22:33

Well I found that I had all the important data backed up a few weeks back. The recovery software found the files but they were named file 1, 2, 3 etc...

So I then rather than shifting through numerous TV shows guessing which episode was which I just stuck with it and shall re-download some of the stuff I want to keep and just forget the rest. Would have been killer if it had happened a few before. 1. Would have been all my photography photos gone and 2. I was moving files for a friend so his Dad's whole family photo collection which was I think 15GB worth would have been gone etc.

Counting my self lucky and shall be investing in another 2TB drive at some point and shall try and setup some kind of RAID or at least scheduled backups XD

azibux1 · 6 Jul 2012 at 22:45

Syther101 said:
I was moving files for a friend so his Dad's whole family photo collection which was I think 15GB worth would have been gone etc.

That was lucky then, would have been terrible if you lost someone elses files

Syther101 said:
Counting my self lucky and shall be investing in another 2TB drive at some point and shall try and setup some kind of RAID or at least scheduled backups XD

Sounds like a good plan (Y)

doyll · 6 Jul 2012 at 23:03

Glad it all worked out.

DennisMenace · 10 Jul 2012 at 21:51

Probably too late now, but +1 for TestDisk.

I started formatting my 2TB drive instead of a USB stick, noticed straight away but by that time the MBR was gone ("Do you want Windows to format this disk?" AAAGH). Ran TestDisk (as Admin! otherwise you have to scan/restore again!) which took 10 hours to find the backup MBR, then restored it in 20 seconds. All files/folders intact, with their full names too. Complete lifesaver, and freeware too.

Now I've got TestDisk, why would I need a backup plan? :rolleyes: