Windows 10 Media Creation Tool created partition in my external hard drive, can't access files anymore

[StevenG87]

So I can't find my Windows disc and needed to re-format my laptop's hard drive. I found a program that locates the key for me and then downloaded the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool which puts a Windows installation program on either a CD or a flash drive.

I didn't have any flash drives or CDs available, so I chose my Seagate GoFlex 1TB external hard drive as a location to put the Windows 10 install. However, it appears the program partitioned my hard drive, and all I can access is the 32GB partition with all of the Windows install files in it.

Here, you can see a picture of the 2 partitions in Disk Management. The 899.51GB "Unallocated" portion is where I'm hoping all of my un-deleted files are.

Is there any possible way to switch this over and access my old files?

Alternatively, would using the System Image in Windows 10 somehow revert my external hard drive back to its original state as well?

 

[hang-the-9]

What the media creation tool does is format the drive you install it on, wiping out your files. There is a warning that comes up when you run the tool that tells you anything on the drive will be deleted. You can install a file recovery tool like Recuva and scan your external drive to see if it will pick up any of your files. TestDisk can also be used to recover partitions although I am not sure if it will work in your case. The issue is that you not only deleted the data, the utility also formatted 32 gb of that data and over-wrote some of that with the setup files, which makes recovery of old files a lot harder.

You can't revert your drive back to it's original state, you would have to create the partition on it again, the only thing that can get your old files back is restoring them from a backup or a data recovery tool which may or may not work.

 

[Colif]

btw: If/when you reinstall win 10 on laptop, you don't need that key and it wouldn't work anyway. Since you updated to win 10 (I assume) your old key would have been converted to a win 10 digital entitlement. What that means is you can always install win 10 on that laptop again and when you run installer and get to screen asking for licence, click I don't have a key and win 10 should continue to install and once you connect to internet, it will check Microsoft servers to confirm PC is eligible for Win 10, and reactivate PC for you.