Accidentally started diskpart format on 2TB external drive, lost data

[Hashim]

Hey everyone.

A few days ago, I accidentally formatted my external HDD with close to 2TB of data on it, which I obviously have no backups of. Suffice to say, I'm panicking right now, and would appreciate some help recovering as much as of the data as I possibly can - ideally all of it.

I was working with diskpart in the command line when I used the command:

format override fs=fat32

...assuming I had selected my 8GB flash drive, and realised I'd accidentally selected my 2TB external drive which had been assigned the same number after reboot (it had been a long night).

The format ran for just a minute or so, without progressing to 1%, before I realised what I'd done and did Ctrl+C. The external drive subsequently stopped showing up in My Computer, even after a reboot of my computer, although it was visible in Device Manager. Again in diskpart, I ran the command list volume, selected the raw volume with select volume #, and then did assign to assign it a drive letter. This made it discoverable to Explorer and My Computer, although it then gave the error that it needed to be formatted before it could be used. Clicking on it in My Computer returns the error:

H:\ is not accessible
The parameter is incorrect.

I then ran the trial ("Simple") version of GetDataBack on the drive, which took around 26 hours to complete before returning at least a hundred different sectors of varying sizes, including large portions of FAT32 and NTFS sectors, as shown below:

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

The problem is that I'm not sure how GDB works, and I don't want to be limited to selecting just one of these file systems and lose the rest of the data. I'm also still holding out hope that because the format ran for such a relatively short time the partition table may still be intact, and that it's simply a matter of recovering that to get my drive back with all original folder structures/

After running GDB and leaving it hanging at the stage pictured above, I also tried using TestDisk and Recuva.

Recuva reported that it couldn't determine the file system.

After using it to run an Intel-type filesystem analysis for a few hours, TestDisk found two partitions that it deemed irrecoverable. Here is the log file: TestDisk log 1 - Pastebin.com.

Anyone know what else I can try? Is it just that I'm using these tools wrong? If not, are there other tools that will be able to recover the partition table and save me many days of recovering and reorganising terabytes of data using GDB (if GDB even functions that way)?

I would really appreciate the help right now. Thanks.

 

[samuria]

You dont want to use file recovery as they are still there format just clears the table you need specific unformat software there is lots of free on google Unformat Hard Drive

 

[SIW2]

First try a partition recovery program.
Aomei partition assistant ( standard free version) has a partition recovery module
AOMEI Partition Assistant: Partition Software & Disk Manager for PC, Laptop and Server

Otherwise:
You can try active file recovery. You can run it to see if it finds your data. If it does, then you need to buy a license to do the recovery. It is one of the better programs, and less expensive than most.
Active@ File Recovery searches for lost RAIDs