[SOLVED] I used a 750GB HDD to boot up windows, now it only shows 32GB. If I format it back to 750GB, will I lose my data?

[donteatpancakes]

Hello there,

I have a 750GB HDD, where I had some family photos etc. . My pc was acting weird, so I decided to format it. In so, I had to boot up windows from this HDD (I installed the windows boot from their website onto this HDD). After everything was done, the HDD only shows 32gb available. I looked it up and I've seen a few ways that I can fix it back to 750GB, but none told me if I would lose my original data (the pics) or not. Can anyone tell me a guarenteed mode I won't lose the pictures?

Thanks in advance!

 

[sizzling]

The only guaranteed method is backing up your files. If the files are important you should already have a backup plan.

 

[donteatpancakes]

The only guaranteed method is backing up your files. If the files are important you should already have a backup plan.

The files were on the HDD as a backup. It's an external HDD. I wasn't aware the disk would create another partition to boot up windos. If I delete that 32gb partition, it says I get 700gb unlocated space: will my files still be there?
Thanks!

 

[sizzling]

The files were on the HDD as a backup. It's an external HDD. I wasn't aware the disk would create another partition to boot up windos. If I delete that 32gb partition, it says I get 700gb unlocated space: will my files still be there?
Thanks!

No you will loose access to the files and no guarantee you can reinstate access. You need to back the up somewhere else. If this is the backup then they already exist somewhere else?

 

[SkyNetRising]

If I delete that 32gb partition, it says I get 700gb unlocated space: will my files still be there?

So - you have external HDD 750GB,
you used windows media creation tool and
formatted 750GB external drive and
created windows installation media on this 750GB drive.

And now you want to recover photos, that were on this drive before you formatted/overwrote it?
Is this correct?

If you delete a partition from your external drive, that will not put back your original files on it.
Part of those pictures is irrecoverably lost (the part that has been overwritten). Rest of it you can try recovering with data recovery software.
Try getdataback. Demo version allows checking, if anything can be recovered. Full version is not free though.
https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm