[SOLVED] How do I best recover deleted computer data divided by a partition from an accidental format?

[JB0]

I plugged in the wrong USB drive which had 5TB of valued data. It was a single partition drive, but then was formatted in half ✂ with 1 partition & 1 unallocated space .

Data recovery software can only scan either the partition or unallocated space, but not both at the same time . I know many of the large deleted files have their data-points in both halves 🌜🚩 🗻 🏳🌛. This is different from spanned volumes since my problem is all on the same physical drive & not split by any intentional design.

Would formatting the unallocated space into a partition & merging the 2 partitions, improve the odds of recovering intact files 🌝☯, since all possible recoverable data-points will now be found in a single scan 🕵️‍♂️ 🚩🏳 ?

How about deleting the partition to make it all unallocated space instead? Is it worth the relatively hopefully minimal data lost from reestablishing the area continuity of the lost data? I'm surprised remedying "partition-dicing-damage" 🔪 is a feature yet to be implemented by any software, nor is it discussed anywhere on the Web 🤔.

 

[USAFRet]

No formatting!
No deleting!
You will be doing far more damage with either of those paths.

What tool are you using for this data recovery?


(And the best way to recover accidentally deleted data is from the backup you made before this happened)
(Just had to put that in there)

 

[JB0]

No formatting! No deleting!
You will be doing far more damage with either of those paths.
What tool are you using for this data recovery?

Yeah 😊 I had the feeling there's no such thing as minimal damage in the digital world where for e.g. 1 bad byte can bring the "blue screen" 😱

I'm using "EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard" but I don't see an option to scan or compare two partitions 😕. I guess I can scan the partitions individually, recover found files. Then go ahead & merge the drive back into 1 partition & see what gets recovered then ☺.

(And the best way to recover accidentally deleted data is from the backup you made before this happened) (Just had to put that in there)

I've been kicking myself all day . I have an unused 10TB USB drive still in the box. I intended to backup the 5TB drive but I was too procrastinated 💩. Lesson learned .

 

[fzabkar]

I believe most data recovery programs should be able to scan the entire physical drive without regard for individual partitions.

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

 

[JB0]

I believe most data recovery programs should be able to scan the entire physical drive without regard for individual partitions.

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE?

Sorry for being M.I.A. ☺ When working on this, a TV in the house decided to decommission itself, so I spent time troubleshooting that & finally just replacing it .

So yeah DMDE does see the overwritten partition. The volume name was "SG5TBRed"

The software that I accidentally used in destroying my archive with, was Hasleo's WinToUSB. Maybe formatting programs should include an additional warning if a volume is more than 50% full before going ahead with the operation 🤔.

Some directories have their trees.

However some don't, which makes me fear how many files are corrupted 😬.

Since 'EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard's' default Partitions window ignores lost partitions, "SG5TBRed" is not listed. But then I noticed up in the corner...

...the "Can't find location" option. I never clicked it before 😅. In this window, it offers to scan the whole physical drive, which is what I needed.
I see now that simply finding the overwritten partition in DMDE was not a eureka moment since it's MBR is damaged & has lost many of it's references.

Whether I use DMDE or EaseUS, I will need to use the respective 'full scan of the physical drive' option, which I finally found in EaseUS. However since DMDE can see most of the overwritten partition, maybe it can reconstruct the directory layout better ? Guess I'll have to try both 😌.

 

[fzabkar]

DMDE is telling you that it found the boot sector (B) and file system (F), but not the copy of the boot sector (C). The copy is the last sector of the partition.

Normally I would say that you should be able to recover most, if not all of your files. However, there could be some insidious corruption if parts have been overwritten. EaseUS is not well regarded by the data recovery professionals. DMDE is far cheaper and much more versatile.

WinToUSB is an MBR partition with the maximum possible capacity, namely 2TiB (2.2TB).

You could use the free version of DMDE to Remove the WinToUSB partition and Insert the original partition. Windows would then be able to see it. At this point you could copy and paste your files to another drive, but there would be the possibility of corruption which would only become apparent when you tried to open the affected file.