Recover a drive

stphnstevey

I was creating a recovery drive intended for a USB Flash Drive. I had an external USB hard disc connected as well as a USB Flash Drive. I accidentally clicked for the external USB hard disc to be the recovery drive and it started the format, 3 seconds later I realised and cancelled it. But the 1TB drive seems have been wiped and it now only reads as a 32GB drive

Is there anyway of undoing or rolling this back?
In the 5 seconds I dont think it could have formatted the 1TB drive, could it?

Any help welcome, thanks

EveryWhere

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk is what you need.

In short, you likely have not deleted much in the way of data, but either the Partition Table and/or Master File Table.

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

that

from what I read about SSD, a delete is normally a delete. On rust spinners it is not the case.

in this case not only have the files become deleted but you re-partitioned the disk, changing the storage geometry.

32 Gb is relatively small, but a few bibles can be stored on that. the first 16 records of the mft are stored in a second copy on the middle of your disk. If you use gpt, I have no idea

Confused? Me too. I would think that a data recovery place is the way to go for this.

However it you will not fork out cash, before wiping it, someone here may have the exact same drive, but possibly saying Wd 4GB is not enough, think you may need the exact model of the drive to get the geometry, you will have to learn how NTFS (GPT?) sits on the disk and figure out what the usb has done

To edit the disk you will probably need a Hex editor like HxD.

personally I would sent it off, but would contact the company before hand. chose a reputable company too.

that

EveryWhere, have you ever over the past few years managed to recover a whole disk? While it is not part of my job, had a modicum of success getting some photos back maybe about 50%? - from deletion.

however complete restoration after deletion (just deletion - so I was told), I've seen more unicorns than successful recovery with diy software

EveryWhere

that wrote: »

EveryWhere, have you ever over the past few years managed to recover a whole disk? While it is not part of my job, had a modicum of success getting some photos back maybe about 50%? - from deletion.

however complete restoration after deletion (just deletion - so I was told), I've seen more unicorns than successful recovery with diy software

It's an external storage drive, so won't be GPT. More likely NTFS.
So I would try to rebuild the Partition Table or to replace the MFT using TestDisk.

EveryWhere

that wrote: »

from what I read about SSD, a delete is normally a delete. On rust spinners it is not the case.

in this case not only have the files become deleted but you re-partitioned the disk, changing the storage geometry.

32 Gb is relatively small, but a few bibles can be stored on that. the first 16 records of the mft are stored in a second copy on the middle of your disk. If you use gpt, I have no idea

Confused? Me too. I would think that a data recovery place is the way to go for this.

However it you will not fork out cash, before wiping it, someone here may have the exact same drive, but possibly saying Wd 4GB is not enough, think you may need the exact model of the drive to get the geometry, you will have to learn how NTFS (GPT?) sits on the disk and figure out what the usb has done

To edit the disk you will probably need a Hex editor like HxD.

personally I would sent it off, but would contact the company before hand. chose a reputable company too.

They likely haven't deleted any files and since it's an external HDD, there is a fighting chance that they can recover the drive.