accidental format of C drive

icedragoon93 · 26 Jun 2014

Long story short, I was going to format my usb but I must have accidentally clicked on my C drive instead. Anyways, during the format of my only drive, a Samsung SSD, my computer crashed and I restarted it. I want originally worried because I thought I was formatting a 2gb usb flash drive. Afterward, my computer no longer detects my SSD in my bios. It's my SSD fried, or can I still save it?

ICIT2LOL · 27 Jun 2014

Hello and welcome iced dragoon I doubt if the drive is fried mate probably a bit confused I should say and I do hope you have data backed up.

So can you slip it into another machine and see if it is "seen" there?? If so then you can reformat and align it before doing a reinstall.
with this https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html

Once you have done that and the drive is ready then you can use this if you have no media
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

one advantage of this is you lose all the bloatware:)

icedragoon93 · 27 Jun 2014

Thanks, I'll have to try that as soon as I can. I'll let you know if it works!

Layback Bear · 27 Jun 2014

You can't format the drive Windows 7 is installed if you are in Windows 7 and using Windows 7 format procedure.

What program and method did you use to do the formatting?

icedragoon93 · 27 Jun 2014

Hello I haven't been able. Try fixing it yet. But I just right clicked the drive and clicked on format. I used which ever tool that was, I had an hp usb formatting tool (i think)that I used before, but I didn't use that to format anything that time. If it helps I recently used the usb drive as a bootable usb to flash my vbios, but the computer worked fine after that installed. I just wanted to format the usb again since it was just something I borrowed, I don't think I even needed to honestly

ICIT2LOL · 27 Jun 2014

Hmm like Layback Bear says mate and I should have picked it up

you cannot format a drive that is in use although It usually bangs up a message to say that and yours didn't??

Anyway maybe the BIOS update has gone not well if so I don't know what to suggest next.

I still think you should try that drive in another machine to see if it gets picked up if it doesn't then something is very wrong.

essenbe · 27 Jun 2014

The only way that is possible is if you booted from the USB drive. If you did that, you could not format the USB drive you were booted into. There is no way you can format anything you are booted into.

Wrend · 28 Jun 2014

essenbe said:

The only way that is possible is if you booted from the USB drive. If you did that, you could not format the USB drive you were booted into. There is no way you can format anything you are booted into.

Well, that's not technically true, as it is possible that it can load whatever programs to RAM and then format the booted to drive from there.

But we digress.

icedragoon93 · 28 Jun 2014

The bios installed just fine. My computer was still able to detect another formatted HDD I had lying around, although nothing is on it. I know for a fact I didn't boot up.my computer from the usb . All that I know is that afterwards my SSD isn't detected and my USB still has all the stuff I had on it before

The only thing on my 2gb usb drive is Windows 98's dos program and the bios files, when I boot from that I get the dos screen

I should be getting a machine to try my SSD on this afternoon, I'll post back here about my discoveries

ICIT2LOL · 28 Jun 2014

icedragoon93 said:

The bios installed just fine. My computer was still able to detect another formatted HDD I had lying around, although nothing is on it. I know for a fact I didn't boot up.my computer from the usb . All that I know is that afterwards my SSD isn't detected and my USB still has all the stuff I had on it before

The only thing on my 2gb usb drive is Windows 98's dos program and the bios files, when I boot from that I get the dos screen

I should be getting a machine to try my SSD on this afternoon, I'll post back here about my discoveries

Yep that is what is needed then if it is not "seen" then I think you have a problem with that drive. I couldn't tell you just what but whatever it is has physically wrecked something.