Pretty typical accidential format

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Salvatore_5

Commendable
Jul 29, 2016
4
0
1,510
Hi. I have an inspiron 15 3521 laptop that was not booting due to a bios error. I tried experimenting with physical drive booting (the physical drive being the laptop hdd) in VMware (Stupidly, without backing it up). Basically I accidentially reformatted it with a windows 8 virtual machine. I cant access the file system without formatting, but new win8 system files in tools like easeus partition master.

(which obviously isnt what im trying to recover)

What would be my best option for recovering the files that i lost during this accidental VMware format? Thank you.

(The HDD is 500gb, and I was using vmware on a seperate pc from the non functional laptop)
 
Solution
basroil
What you describe is not "formatting", rather a complete rewrite of the data. In that case, the used space of that VM will have completely rewritten an equivalent amount of the data originally in the disk (though not necessarily your data, it could be the unused portion of the disk if you're lucky).

Attach that disk to a different computer and use file recovery software on the entire drive. If you're lucky you can recover some of the files, but if you're unlucky then nobody will be able to help. Take this as a lesson that backups are absolutely mandatory!
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basroil

basroil

Glorious
Oct 19, 2013
8,698
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What you describe is not "formatting", rather a complete rewrite of the data. In that case, the used space of that VM will have completely rewritten an equivalent amount of the data originally in the disk (though not necessarily your data, it could be the unused portion of the disk if you're lucky).

Attach that disk to a different computer and use file recovery software on the entire drive. If you're lucky you can recover some of the files, but if you're unlucky then nobody will be able to help. Take this as a lesson that backups are absolutely mandatory!
 
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Solution
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Salvatore_5

Commendable
Jul 29, 2016
4
0
1,510


The windows files were only 10gb, but what you said is very concerning as its entirely possible 465gb of blank VM files overwrote all my personal files. I'm trying a minitool partition recovery/scan to see if its recoverable. Any software recommendations for basic file recovery? I've used easeus for basic file recovery in the past, but I feel as if there might be a better alternative.
 
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basroil

basroil

Glorious
Oct 19, 2013
8,698
1
46,960


Like I said, it all depends on how much data was written (not just formatted and reserved). Some of the other tools you can try are recuva, Norton Utilities (UnErase), Data Recovery Wizard, etc
 
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