Question Started format, wrong external drive!

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AlexxxP

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Dec 10, 2015
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Can anyone help?

The other day I messed up, I had my all important G-Raid drive (4TB) plugged in and turned on while at the same time having a flash drive inserted in another port, whilst distracted & in a hurry I accidentally selected the wrong drive and clicked format... disastrous!

It took about 10 seconds for me to I realise what I'd done & about another 5-10 seconds to shut it down, of course now I can't see my files.

I've purchased & ran disk drill which probably found everything but it's not that much of help because everything has lost its name, date and folder, etc. It would take forever to rename & categorize everything.

Does anyone know if its possible to fix it so that I can see the original files on the drive?

Surely 20 seconds of format can't destroy everything on a mirrored raid drive? Please tell me there's a way.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
This is why RAID is not a backup...

It sounds like the data is still there, so you haven't lost everything, though as you say re-classification may take a while.

Make sure any recovery you do writes to a different disk, and you don't write anything more to this disk until you've gotten everything off it.

Some other recovery tools might work better: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
 

AlexxxP

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Dec 10, 2015
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Many thanks for such a speedy reply & supplied links, I'll take some time to read.

Regards, Alex
 
It didn't destroy the data, just the FAT (File Allocation Table) - that's why a quick format is so quick, it just destroys the directory that tells the host where everything is on the drive, not the actual data itself.

Rule one - do not write anything to that drive as it has the potential to overwrite data you want.

Rule two - same as rule one :)

There are lots of recovery options, some experimentation (and ££) may be in order. Best of luck.
 

AlexxxP

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Dec 10, 2015
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Thanks for your reply kyzarvs,

I'm sure the principle is the same but I'm using a mac, I'm probably using the wrong search terms when looking for a fix.

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