Canceled reformat.

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Willadin

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Hello, my name is Will

I have a problem with my pc. I planed to reinstall the system due to bugs from some pre installed software. Since I do not have an external drive, I made a partition and placed all the files I wish to backup(I usually do this whenever I reinstall). Unfortunately I did not pay close attention to the format options (it was set to "clear whole drive and partitions" by default, it should have been "clear main drive and leave partitions"). After the ten second timer it started to format the drive with "clear whole drive and partitions" option. I got shocked and there was no cancel button, so I shut it down forcefully. I booted up "mini xp" from a cd (since i could not access windows normaly due to some bugs even before). I looked at the hard drive list and drive C and F(the partition with my backups) is GONE! I looked up "Partition wizard" and there was a huge amount of unallocated space!(the total capacity of drive C and F)!

Now I feel so bad because I could have canceled it when the countdown timer appeared. I'm still searching the right software to recover data from the unallocated space. I should have just spend some money for an external disk for backups even if it is not going to be used very often. I know it was my own fault and, I did not pay close attention to those settings. But is there anyway to recover that data? If there really is no way... I guess I could leave it. It's just that I have lots of saved projects, photos, music, and memories (I do have an iPad and an old iPod, I think it is possible to recover my music from these devices). I will be waiting patiently for any solutions. I will try to search for solutions as well. Thank you!
 
Solution
There are quite a few utilities that can recover from destroyed partition information, such as EASEUS Partition Recovery. However, if the format operation did a full format and overwrote the data sectors, you will not be able to recover everything.

IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING that any utilities that you download and run SHOULD NOT BE INSTALLED TO THE DISK IN QUESTION. Do not write to this drive. Every write to it (OS install, tool download, etc) will overwrite blocks that may contain your precious data. You will have to either have another disk to build the OS and boot from, or use a bootable CD built with something like Parted Magic. And when you build that CD, use someone else's machine, so that you don't write to the...
There are quite a few utilities that can recover from destroyed partition information, such as EASEUS Partition Recovery. However, if the format operation did a full format and overwrote the data sectors, you will not be able to recover everything.

IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING that any utilities that you download and run SHOULD NOT BE INSTALLED TO THE DISK IN QUESTION. Do not write to this drive. Every write to it (OS install, tool download, etc) will overwrite blocks that may contain your precious data. You will have to either have another disk to build the OS and boot from, or use a bootable CD built with something like Parted Magic. And when you build that CD, use someone else's machine, so that you don't write to the now-damaged drive.

If the simple utilities mentioned above don't solve your problems, there are more intricate ones that will read every sector on the drive and try to reconstruct files. But they will cost in the neighborhood of $100.

Good luck to you!
 
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Willadin

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Thanks for the quick response! I have hirens boot cd(version15 I believe) but since it has tons of program's, I don't know which exactly will work. What I do is I download and install a recovery tool using my old laptop, copy the installed files to a USB and run it on mini xp on the pc I wanted to recover. Will that overwrite any sectors? Anyways I'll try taking a look at easeus partition recovery. Thank you so much for your reply!
 

Willadin

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Great! I got My data back! Thanks to easeus partition recovery! I took 3 hours to scan and repair it. But now I have another problem. I can't reinstall my pc! It says "an error occurred while executing an application. But at least I got my data back, that was a relief! Now I'm finding a solution to my new problem. Thank you so much WyomingKnott!
 

Willadin

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I Found My windows 7 recovery disk and run startup repairs and stuff and now I can boot up windows! Keeping a boot cd and recovery disks are very important. I found them just hanging around in the attic. All my data are completely restored and now I may reinstall windows soon. Oh can anyone recommend a decent external hard drive for me? Just 500 gigs is alright (for storing big files, photos, and important projects. Thank you so much!
 
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