Accidentally Formatted External Hard Drive - Help!

I was trying to reformat a thumb drive and accidentally reformatted my WD External Hard drive - 4 GB. I bet I'm not the first to do this. Can anyone give me guidance on what to do? Has this been covered before?

Thank you in advance!

 

When the drive is formatted, your computer marks all storage spaces empty. Actually, data is still on the drive until and unless you don’t overwrite it. Overwritten data makes recovery impossible. Data recovery can only be done using a professional data recovery tool.

 

As noted, typically the space is just marked as available and can some times be recovered. You can try using Recuva from the makers of CCleaner. Wise Data Recovery is also popular.

However, one of the problems will be recovering all the file segments ("fragments") in the correct order to make a complete file. For text documents, it may be easy to piece them together to make a readable document. For photos, maybe not. This is true even with professional recovery services and one reason it can cost $100s or even $1000s.

Do you remember the reformatting method you used? If you used "Quick" format, your chances of recovery are much greater because only the master file tables are overwritten. However, if you selected "Full" format, then each storage location on the disk was reformatted and recovery chances are greatly reduced.

And each time the drive is used after the format, recovery chances decrease.

I am just saying, don't hold your breath!

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. This illustrates why it is essential we always maintain "multiple" backup copies of any data we don't want to lose - to include at least one copy "off-site".

 

Thank you - yes, I did use the "Full" format. I was intending to reformat an old thumb drive, with some errors. I blame post-Covid brain fog - I'm just not functioning well. Unfortunately, there were a lot of family photos on the drive - like several thousand. I had put them there from an old Windows 7 PC and was moving them to a new PC. My intent was to catalog and organize and then back-up. Most of my external hard drives are merely back-up. I also had about a 100 movies that I had ripped over the years - to back up my DVDs (and some old VHS tapes). There were some text files - and one folder which had most of my old pdf tax records. That folder was password protected. I'm thinking that this is all gone. I'm just sick about it.

I had unplugged the drive as soon as I realized what was happening, but it had probably run for about 30-45 seconds. When I plugged it into my new computer, it said there was nothing there.

Thank you for your reply - it is appreciated.

 

I would be too.

I would certainly try one of those recovery programs. The fact you quickly unplugged the drive might mean you may be able to recover some of your files. And the fact you selected full may actually be a good thing because a full format takes so much longer, it [hopefully] did not get much of the disk.

Depending on how much value you put in your files - especially the family photos, it may be worth checking out a data recovery service. At least give a couple a call and hear them out.

 

i did that about 4 years -i felt like a moron

 

I've had REASONABLE success with Recuva as mentioned already. The data is generally recoverable until overwritten.

 

Following up. First, I made a huge typo in the original post - I said it was a 4GB external hard drive - it was a 4TB EHD. I seriously blame Covid brain fog. I am normally very precise and have been making incredible mistakes since I had the 'rona. I have to be very, very cautious/deliberate. I've even given up driving, except in extreme circumstances.

I had a computer tech stop by for an unrelated problem. (that problem was something I could've easily solved in December.) Anyway, he looked at the External Hard Drive and said that he may be able to recover a portion, but he said that he thought he could only offer a 70% probability of doing so. I would need to buy a second 4TB EHD to transfer the recovered files to. He said I should try to recover the files from my old PC and other EHDs first.

His recommendation is to not load up very large EHDs with materials - to instead use 1TB EHDs instead - they are easier to recover and, if you lose something, you don't lose as much.

----------------
I should have never done this at this point in time. Normally, I would write out a plan for making the migration so that all my files were first backed up. I was trying to consolidate things and just moved too fast and am paying the price. I thank all for weighing in on this. I'm planning to try to recover files. I have already found the old tax files. I think I can find most of my old pictures. I suspect that what I have lost were a lot of old VHS movies I have digitalized over the past 25 years. Some were family movies, which I have the original VHS tapes. Most were things I taped off of HBO back in the day and no longer have copies of.

After doing what I can, I'll follow up on the suggestions of Digerati and Don Gaynor and give Recuva a shot. But I'm seriously going to wait another 6 months or more until my brain is a little more on track.

C'est la vie. Best to all!

 

Sorry to hear about you getting COVID. I hope your symptoms clear soon. Giving up driving would be tough - especially since it is a skill that takes constant honing to remain a safe driver.

I understand what he is saying, but frankly, it really doesn't make much sense (except for the amount of data part). Those are just arbitrary numbers. You could use the same argument to justify going with 500GB drives instead of 1TB.

The odds a 4TB drive failing are the exact same for a 1TB drive failing which are the exact same for a 500GB drive failing. That is, there is nothing to suggest larger capacity drives are more or less reliable than smaller capacity drives. But if the 500GB drive fails you "only" lose 500GB of data, compared to the 1TB drive.

And recovering a given file from drive A has the same difficulty level as it is from drive B.

To throw a wrench in the understanding here, if you have four 1TB drives, you have a greater chance of 1 of those drives failing compared to if you have one 4TB drive!

So the lesson to be learned is to have multiple backup copies of all your data.