Please help recovering after diskpart clean & format mbr

KorbenDallas · 28 Dec 2019

Hi everyone,

I tried to format empty space on my SSD to MBR from GPT, because Windows 10 installer wasn't letting me install my partition on the empty space I created from the Disk Management tool in Win7.

I rebooted my PC with the Win10 DVD inside, got to the Win 10 installation menu, opened up CMD, and ran:

(corrected order of commands in response to SIW2's reply below)

-> diskpart
-> list disk
-> select disk 0 (my SSD)
-> select partition 1 (the 120 GB empty partition)
-> clean
-> convert mbr (sorry, I wrote format mbr before)

When I went back to the partition selection window, the entire SSD was one empty partition, except for that System Reserved partition that Win 7 always creates when installing it.

I then booted on another drive and did no other work on the formatted SSD.
I've been running a ton of programs since: MiniTool partition, iBeesoft data recovery, R-Studio, but I can't find almost anything on the drive.

Disk Management displays the partition style as MBR and iBeesoft data recovery tool says it's FAT12.
I've been browsing a lot of threads online, and one I found here is:
Data Recovery after Diskpart cleaned and created new partition

But it's a bit beyond my understanding =\ . Any help would be appreciated

SIW2 · 28 Dec 2019

What does this mean?

2. diskpart format mbr

MBR and GPT are partition styles. They are created by intializing or converting

fat32 and ntfs are filesystems. They are created by formatting

Not clear what you have done.

Usual sequence is first try partition recovery tools.

If that is not successful then try data recovery tools.

You could try partition find and mount
Partition Find and Mount — free partition recovery software

Partition Find and Mount: Tour and Screenshots

KorbenDallas · 28 Dec 2019

Hey SIW2, thank you for the quick reply.

I have a 512 GB SSD, and on it I had Win 7 pro. I used the Windows Disk Mgmt tool to shrink my volume and create an unformatted ~120 GB partition.

Then I reboot my PC with my Win10 DVD in the drive, got to the installation screen, and at the part where you select which partition you want to install Win on, the 120 GB partition was listed as unable to install on, since it's in the GPT format.

So I press Shift + F10 (or Ctrl + F10) to open up the CMD, and I ran:

-> diskpart
-> list disk
-> select disk 0 (my SSD)
-> select partition 1 (the 120 GB empty partition)
-> clean
-> convert mbr (sorry, I wrote format mbr before)

Then I closed the cmd, did back in the Win 10 install tool, then forward again to see the changes in the disk screen, and at that point I saw that my entire SSD was on empty partition of ~480 GB, minus the ~500 MB Reserved Partition that Win7 creates when you install it.

I'm running partition find and mount now with a through scan, it found a 607 MB partition but it's empty when mounted.

Is there a way to revert back from convert MBR maybe? Or when you do that, you lose everything?

Thank you

SIW2 · 28 Dec 2019

It is worth seeing if another tool can find any partitions. Most 3rd party partitioning programs have that function - though not always on the free versions.

You could try Aomei ( you can get the pro version on free giveaway )
Aomei partition assistant Pro

Or try diskgenius
DiskGenius

If you can't recover partitions then try file recovery.
One of the better ones is Active@ File Recovery and it's less expensive than others.. It will scan, then if it finds your files, you need to buy a key to recover them.

There are also some free file recovery programs.

samuria · 28 Dec 2019

You never use diskpart unless your an advanced user as it can screw things up using mintool or simliar you can do these things and it does nothing until you commit

KorbenDallas · 29 Dec 2019

SIW2 said:

It is worth seeing if another tool can find any partitions. Most 3rd party partitioning programs have that function - though not always on the free versions.

You could try Aomei ( you can get the pro version on free giveaway )
Aomei partition assistant Pro

Or try diskgenius
DiskGenius

If you can't recover partitions then try file recovery.
One of the better ones is Active@ File Recovery and it's less expensive than others.. It will scan, then if it finds your files, you need to buy a key to recover them.

There are also some free file recovery programs.

Hey, so these are the results from various tools I've used so far.
Active@file recovery is still ongoing, but so far it's only found some audio files and it's halfway over.

It's strange how GetDataBackPro for example finds the empty 117 GB partition I had prepared from Disk Management for my new Win 10 install, but it doesn't find the rest of the ~350 GB of the Windows 7 partition I had created it from.