[SOLVED] Any way to recover a disk that had an aborted formatting done on it?

[Sky_Render]

So we have a drive that was accidentally set to format, and the process was forcibly halted at 1%. However, that process appears to have removed the ability to set that drive in Windows 10 (at least as useable; it claims the drive needs to be formatted first). Is there any way to recover the drive? TestDisk was unable to recover the partition, but it was run with default settings, if that helps any. Thank you!

 

[TerryLaze]

There are other tools like testdisk that you could try, some are even free to use, look for unformat on google.
Otherwise if testdisk or some other tool can see the files you will have to copy all the files (at least all the ones you want to keep) to a different disk and then properly format the problematic drive to make it work correctly again.

 

[Sky_Render]

Well we tried using PhotoRec, and it couldn't find any files on the drive. I'm hesitant to tell Windows to do a format on the partition, as I'm fairly certain that any potential residual data on the drive will be wiped if I do that...

 

[USAFRet]

What is, or more accurately was, on this drive?

 

[fzabkar]

If PhotoRec wasn't able to find anything, then either the drive was encrypted or it was TRIM-ed. Is the drive an SSD or an external drive?

 

[USAFRet]

Well we tried using PhotoRec, and it couldn't find any files on the drive. I'm hesitant to tell Windows to do a format on the partition, as I'm fairly certain that any potential residual data on the drive will be wiped if I do that...

Do NOT do any format.

What type drive was this?
Quick format or Full format?

 

[TerryLaze]

TestDisk was unable to recover the partition, but it was run with default settings, if that helps any. Thank you!

Look on the hard drive label, type the serial into google and use the drive geometry numbers in testdisk, not every drive is bock standard.

 

[fzabkar]

Look on the hard drive label, type the serial into google and use the drive geometry numbers in testdisk, not every drive is bock standard.

CHS geometries are meaningless. I would avoid TestDisk on this basis alone.

 

[TerryLaze]

CHS geometries are meaningless. I would avoid TestDisk on this basis alone.

How do you mean? The partition table is located at a specific address which tells the system all the specific addresses of the partitions.
CHS determines the physical location of these addresses.

 

[fzabkar]

How do you mean? The partition table is located at a specific address which tells the system all the specific addresses of the partitions.
CHS determines the physical location of these addresses.

The maximum capacity that can be represented by CHS numbers is 8.4GB (1024 cylinders, 256 heads, 63 sectors).

https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/PartTables.htm

This is the partition table for a 160GB HDD. You can see that the second partition has identical first and last CHS values, so they are meaningless.

 LBA:0                  block: 0
 Disk identifier (Windows):
 0DDC0DDBh
 Boot  System ID   :   First    :    Last    : Relative : Number of:
 Flag              :Cyl Head Sec:Cyl Head Sec:  Sector  :  Sectors :
 80h 07h NTFS/exFAT:   0   1  1 :1023 254 63 :        63: 311636929:   160 GB
 00h 27h ??        :1023 254 63 :1023 254 63 : 311638016:    921600:   472 MB
 00h 00h           :   0   0  0 :   0   0  0 :         0:         0:        0
 00h 00h           :   0   0  0 :   0   0  0 :         0:         0:        0
 MBR signature (0xAA55):
 AA55h

 

[Sky_Render]

We were able to pull data off of one partition on the drive, but nothing from the big partition where most everything was stored. It's an SSD, and I'm a bit worried that the easy-to-wipe nature of SSDs may well have nipped us in the behind here...

 

[bandit8623]

We were able to pull data off of one partition on the drive, but nothing from the big partition where most everything was stored. It's an SSD, and I'm a bit worried that the easy-to-wipe nature of SSDs may well have nipped us in the behind here...

depends on how it was "formatted" secure wipe sends a voltage spike through the data. if it was a standard quick format (it just wiped the table). minitool would likely be able to save data on the fast format one. if secure wiped data is probably gone.