Formatted an external drive, now how do I get it back?

[netrate]

I was working with two drives and mixed them up on a format. What is on the drive isn't essential, but it would be nice to see what was lost, so I can go from there. Can anyone recommend a way to get it back? It just happened and I haven't put anything else on the drive since it happened. Hit Quick Format, and stopped the formatting about 10 seconds into it, sucks, but what can you do? Be more careful next time, right? Any suggestions?

 

[zigzag3143]

I was working with two drives and mixed them up on a format. What is on the drive isn't essential, but it would be nice to see what was lost, so I can go from there. Can anyone recommend a way to get it back? It just happened and I haven't put anything else on the drive since it happened. Hit Quick Format, and stopped the formatting about 10 seconds into it, sucks, but what can you do? Be more careful next time, right? Any suggestions?

Unformat Freeware: Free unformat hard drive. Unerase unformat data recovery software. Unformat step by step data recovery instructions.

 

[netrate]

That software only recovers 1gb, and this is a 2T drive .
Two of the freeware programs said there was nothing found - which I can't understand because I just formatted, stopped the format and then tried them.

 

[theog]

Try
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

Rescue Kit Free Edition | PARAGON Software Group - free partition software, hard disk partitioning

 

[netrate]

This sucks in a way. I tried one of the freeware unformatting and it found raw files. I didn't tell it to write to the hard drive, but it did and wrote over a bunch of stuff. Crap.
Using Minitools now, it really works well - although it is going to be a long haul -20 hours or so to go through the entire drive. Tested it for 2 hours and stopped it. Found a heap of files, which is good, but also found those raw files the other crappy unformatter found. The freeware version of Mini-tools does not let you unpause or start previous work on it, so I am starting over with Mini-tools and letting it run for the night. At least I know the files are still there, but lost a load of them with that RAW file junk. I never thought that 2T would be such a pain.

 

[netrate]

I tried Recuva and it worked, well almost. I let it run for a day and it found 90% of the stuff. Showed me the folders and what could be recovered. Well, I recovered about 20% of it, but found that even thought it showed me folders and files, it did not recover anything to folders or files. It just recovered all files, everything in one root directory. All of the folders are gone, just files. Any idea why? It says the files and folders are in EXCELLENT condition (recuva), but it does not put them into folders.

 

[joel406]

If you mixed up 2 drives while setting up the format of your 2GB drive then it sounds like both drives are trying to use the same drive letter. D E F G or whatever. Open "Control Panel" and select "Administrative Tools".
Open "Computer Management".
Select "Disk Management".
Scrol down in the lower part of the window that shows each individual drive.
If you see your 2TB drive "right" click it and select "Change Drive Letter".
Change the drive letter to something that is not in use by another drive.

That should solve it.