Hard disk appearing as raw disk

[ManuBell]

Hello,

i was trying to make a usb bootable, using the command panel. By the time i reached the "clean" command i realised i had selected a different disk. Now that disk appears as empty (capacity 0 bytes, free space 0 bytes). When trying to open the disk it says i need to format it.

Is there any chance to recover my files and how could this be done?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, ManuBell.

You have put yourself in a pretty tough situation there, mate. 🙁
What you've done here is a low level format, which has probably corrupted the partition when it was interrupted as it is shown as "RAW". Normally it should be "unallocated" disk space and the drive should be shown as "not initialized". The only good news in this case is that you've used "clean" and not "clean all", which would have most definitely made it impossible for any kind of data retrieval. Your only hope is to try out some data recovery programs: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html and http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm, in hopes that they'd be able to find some of the data intact and recover it. Otherwise, if the files are valuable to you, I'd suggest that you go straight for a data recovery company.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[ManuBell]

Hey there, ManuBell.

You have put yourself in a pretty tough situation there, mate. 🙁
What you've done here is a low level format, which has probably corrupted the partition when it was interrupted as it is shown as "RAW". Normally it should be "unallocated" disk space and the drive should be shown as "not initialized". The only good news in this case is that you've used "clean" and not "clean all", which would have most definitely made it impossible for any kind of data retrieval. Your only hope is to try out some data recovery programs: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html and http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm, in hopes that they'd be able to find some of the data intact and recover it. Otherwise, if the files are valuable to you, I'd suggest that you go straight for a data recovery company.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

Hey thanks for the suggestions.

I 've bought a new 1tb disk, so i can try to recover my data, but no success, i ve tried with Recuva, Pandora recovery and Glary undelete. All the above say that they cannot access the disk.

Any ideas?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

That's what I was afraid of. 🙁

If none of the data recovery software options are able to access it and "see" the files, then your only option might be a professional solution, such as a data recovery company. Unfortunately, having in mind you've tried to low level format the drive, even professional might not succeed in recovering the files, but I don't see any other possibilities.

Please keep me posted.

 

[ManuBell]

As i was desperate, i thought why not give a shot for a professional help, but the cost was higher than i expected.
But i was lucky, as one of my co-workers had an issue with his hard drive,
and recommended to use the " Mini tool power data recovery" (link at the end of post}

I was surprised that it actually could read my partitions, and 8 hours later, i had my files back (some with altered names, but i
think that must be because of the greek characters i might have used).

PS: Thanks for the suggestions Boogieman_WD!
http://download.cnet.com/MiniTool-Power-Data-Recovery-Free-Edition/3000-2094_4-10561431.html

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Sure thing, mate! The important thing is that you get to keep your data.

I'd recommend that you think of a backup option for your important files which you can't afford to lose. Cloud storage, another external drive, the internal HDD in a different system are all viable backup options.

Cheers!