New volume without format

[hectorbls]

So here is the deal. I was creating a bootable 8gb flash drive to run knoppix, the process involved formating the flash drive to FAT32, however in the process, I selected the wrong drive letter and the program started to format my 1.5 TB usb hard drive. The format did not go pass 2% since I disconnected the drive and ended the program. As I reconnected the 1.5 TB usb hard drive, the entire drive is recognized as unallocated space under the Disk Management in Windows Vista. I know for a fact that the formatting did not erase much of the data in it as I was able to preview most of it with Power Data Recovery using the physical drive scan. I think that what got erased was the NTFS that was there before and not the actual files. My question is, if I create a new volume of the unallocated space, will all my information be erased or lost in the format? And, is there a way to place the NTFS back in the drive without formatting the drive? I mainly want to avoid the whole recovery after format issue since there is no guarantee that all of the information will be there.

Here are the specs:
Windows Vista x64
AMD Phenom x4
Seagate 1.5 TB

 

[Paperdoc]

Hmmm! You say you had started to do a FORMAT operation by mistake on the hard drive and then stopped it. Now, Format does not change the allocation of disk space to Partitions, but you say that Disk Management shows the entire disk as Unallocated Space. That means the Partition Table has been altered and cannot tell the OS where to find any disk Partition(s). So, you have three recovery problems: get the Partition structure back, then re-establish the File System, then recover all the files. I have not done this, but there have been several threads about this type of project.

One software package that does at least part of this is called Getdataback NTFS. They have a useful free trial offer. You download and run the software on your disk, and it will do a bunch of work and show exactly what your disk will look like (with all your files, etc., one hopes!) if it does the recovery operation for you. IF you like the result and believe that is all you need, you pay them the price for the software and it completes the job. You now own and have used successfully the software. On the other hand, if you don't think it can do the job right, you don't pay and it leaves your disk unaltered so you can try something else. But at least you have learned some useful things about what is still on your disk.

If that tool does not do the whole job, start looking around for what is needed for the three phases of this recovery project.