Restoring Formatted Drive Partition

[Vlad Kotenko]

Hello,

I wanted to format one partition on my computer which had to be cleaned but accidentally chose another partition (partition D) where all the important data is stored. The formatting was at slow speed (the check mark was removed from "Quick Format" option before the formatting started). After 9 percent of the partition had been formatted, I realized that I had chosen a wrong partition with all the important data on it. I instantly terminated the formatting process by switching off the computer to make sure that the process stops immediately. Now Windows system says that the partition is not accessible.

Does anyone know how to restore the data in the partition and regain access to it?

 

[hang-the-9]

Install Recuva, not on the same partition as you are trying to work from. Run it and see if it can pick up any files. Note that even if it shows files it can restore, they may be corrupted.

 

[Vlad Kotenko]

Thank you for the information. Data Rescue PC3 is listed as the best software at The Best Data Recovery Software of 2016.

The installation file is only about 7 mb in size. Does anyone know whether Data Rescue PC3 is a good software for restoring data from a damaged or formatted drive partition?

 

[Paperdoc]

I can't tell you the best data recovery software. But to help you understand, the Full Format option you used actually writes all zeros to every Sector of the Partition as it does its job. So a certain portion of your Partition (about 9%) has had its data destroyed completely, and you will not get that back. It is likely that the destroyed portion includes the areas where the root directory and data management tables are stored, as well as other parts that contained actual data files. But 90% of your Partition was NOT overwritten and the data still is there. It's just a bit tricky to figure out which Sectors belong to which files. That is what Data Recovery software is for, and it can do a lot of recovering for you. It just will not be able to recover SOME of your files.

You should also know an important factor. Any good data recovery software package will NOT write anything to the "faulty" drive, so that it cannot be corrupted further. Instead, anything it can recover must be written to a DIFFERENT drive, so you will need (at least temporarily) a spare HDD with enough capacity to hold all the files that can be recovered.

 

[giantbucket]

so far i've only used MiniToo's Power Data Recovery (i paid for it, but there's a free limited version) and it did a good job on the one drive i needed significant help with.