Partitioned external HDD and lost all data?

willhub · 10 Apr 2020 at 14:24

So I partitioned an external HDD with a 20GB partition to put Windows 10 recovery media on, the issue is, when I booted from it and realised I best do it from inside Windows, when I got back in Windows there was a 32GB FAT32 partition and the rest of the 4TB HDD unallocated?

What on earth has it done???? Have I lost all my backup data?

willhub · 10 Apr 2020 at 19:49

the 20GB partition on my external drive was NTFS, I did point the media creation tool to that specific drive.

It's not essential but it'd be a a shame if I lost it all, got this software called Mini Tool Partition Wizard, it's been running on a quick search for about 5 hours now and only half way, hope it finds the data.

willhub · 11 Apr 2020 at 08:54

The recovery tool only found the 20GB partition

I guess I'll try that Recuva and run it on my laptop as I'm guessing on a 4TB drive it's going to take a day or so on a proper scan to find the data.

willhub · 11 Apr 2020 at 15:50

I used EaseUS recovery, thing is as it's recovering files, they're all mixed up, will it be possible to put everything back together again? Bit like humpty dumpy.

willhub · 11 Apr 2020 at 16:01

mrbell1984 said:
The Microsoft Windows Media Creator is for usb sticks really so you create a boot drive.

Why on earth did you point it to your HDD?

I just assumed if I created a partition on my external USB drive it would install on that partition, dunno why it needs the entire drive.

willhub · 11 Apr 2020 at 17:59

mrbell1984 said:
It creates brand new partitions itself by formatting the drive to make it bootable.

Did you get all your data back?

The software has 6 hours left lol, but it's finding all the data, however so far as I can see, it's not all in order, just files everywhere.

willhub · 11 Apr 2020 at 18:38

So any apps or games I can kiss goodbye to really?

willhub · 13 Apr 2020 at 10:57

Surprisingly it has located full intact folders, all my pictures are still in their folders, even some downloads. They seem to be duplicated over 2 lost partitions though, weird.

However, 3.2TB is unsorted. Oh well, at least camera stuff is recovered and documents are on OneDrive anyway.