Question Installed Windows on wrong drive, how to recover the files?

[snowjim]

Hello,

I installed Windows 11 yesterday, but unfortunately, I accidentally chose the wrong drive (1TB SSD) to install on, including recreating partitions. The entire installation process completed, and I only realized the mistake once I was in Windows and tried to access the backup files. Now, I have installed Windows on the correct drive (240GB SSD) and am trying to recover at least some of the data that was on the larger drive.

I moved the disk to another computer where I have more space for recovering files and set it to read-only. I have tried DMDE, Photorec, GetDataBack, and UFS Explorer Professional Recovery. Most of them just reflect the current content on the drive, but some do find files that they place under "lost & found." However, the names are scrambled and the folder structures no longer exist. I have managed to recover some photos, but no text files, notes, Visual Studio solution files, and so on. There are a lot of files, and each needs to be manually checked to see what they are—it's like finding needles in a haystack.

I usually store sensitive data on a local NAS that is backed up, but sometimes there might be some stuff that hasn't made its way to the NAS yet, which is what I'm now trying to recover.

After investing a day's work on this, I'm about to give up. I guess that recreating the partitions (a old bad habit) might have been the nail in the coffin.

Any suggestions, or should I just take the hit and format it so it can be used again?

Regards

 

[Lutfij]

You can try TestDisk and Recuva but your mileage can and will vary.

I accidentally chose the wrong drive (1TB SSD) to install on
This is why we advise having only the drive you intend to install the OS on hooked to the board, so the OS partitions aren't scattered across other drives or worse, you wipe a drive with mission critical data.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

With all the repartitioning/formatting that occured you can count on your data having been overwritten and therefore 100% unrecoverable by any means. Especially if there is an SSD involved. It's situations like this where you recover from the backup you should have made before starting. Take this as a valuable lesson.

 

[snowjim]

With all the repartitioning/formatting that occured you can count on your data having been overwritten and therefore 100% unrecoverable by any means. Especially if there is an SSD involved. It's situations like this where you recover from the backup you should have made before starting. Take this as a valuable lesson.

Yes, this was the backup. I have never accidentally chosen the wrong drive before, but I guess there's always a first time. Hopefully, not a second. I will make sure to move important data away from my workstation in the future before doing anything like this.

However, you are not entirely right. It is clear that data can be recovered. I have already recovered a lot of it. Some of the programs recovered about 300-400 folders, with each folder containing 500 files. But since the names are scrambled, there is no way I can find what I want to recover. It's also possible that the files I'm seeking are indeed gone for good.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

You can rest assured that what you think you've recovered is not even close to what you are looking for. How many of those 300-400 "recovered" files/folders have you actually analyzed beyond a quick directory scan?

 

[snowjim]

You can try TestDisk and Recuva but your mileage can and will vary.

I accidentally chose the wrong drive (1TB SSD) to install on
This is why we advise having only the drive you intend to install the OS on hooked to the board, so the OS partitions aren't scattered across other drives or worse, you wipe a drive with mission critical data.

Thanks, have already tested TestDisk(photorec and that was the one that got me most files. Recuva is right now analyzing the disk, hope it can get some more files.