Can I un-format a External HD that was Reformatted by mistake?

[WizardHunt]

Well here's the deal. I was putting in a new external HD into a external dock, that I was going to partition and format for Mac. Well I must have had my movie External drive on and overlooked it somehow, and accidentally formatted that one instead thinking that I was using the new drive. What was strange was it said the drive was not readable and needed to be initialized. So I assumed, that was the drive that needed to be partitioned, yes I partitioned it, then formatted it for Mac. I even wrote some files on it about 20 GB or so. We are talking about a 1 TB HD. Anyway , It's not possible is it to reclaim my drive is it? Sad thing is it was my movies drive. I lost 151 movies. I am so angry at myself. And of course it was not part of my time machine. So am I out of luck? Let me know gently guys. . .

 

[ViciousShadow21]

Well here's the deal. I was putting in a new external HD into a external dock, that I was going to partition and format for Mac. Well I must have had my movie External drive on and overlooked it somehow, and accidentally formatted that one instead thinking that I was using the new drive. What was strange was it said the drive was not readable and needed to be initialized. So I assumed, that was the drive that needed to be partitioned, yes I partitioned it, then formatted it for Mac. I even wrote some files on it about 20 GB or so. We are talking about a 1 TB HD. Anyway , It's not possible is it to reclaim my drive is it? Sad thing is it was my movies drive. I lost 151 movies. I am so angry at myself. And of course it was not part of my time machine. So am I out of luck? Let me know gently guys. . .

you may not be able to get all of it back but theoretically you should be able to get at least 98% of it back. just depends on how much you are willing to spend. in my opinion Data Rescue III is the best software for data recovery but its $99. there are others out there. Good Luck.

 

[Angelo95210]

If your data is vital, you may also contact a dedicated company for data recovering. They are expensive but can do miracles. Anyway use your disk as less as less as possible till you get your data recovered.

 

[VPrime]

you may not be able to get all of it back but theoretically you should be able to get at least 98% of it back. just depends on how much you are willing to spend. in my opinion Data Rescue III is the best software for data recovery but its $99. there are others out there. Good Luck.

haha, 98%? Good luck with that. Even when taking it to a professional and paying a lot of money they do not guarantee 98%!
If the drive is still plugged in, remove it. If any thing is being written to the drive it will be overwriting what used to be there and what may be recoverable.

 

[geese]

If you dont want to pay for a data recovery program, and you dont mind using the Terminal, I'd recommend PhotoRec:http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Hopefully you'll get some of your data back. Let this be a lesson learnt!

 

[ViciousShadow21]

haha, 98%? Good luck with that. Even when taking it to a professional and paying a lot of money they do not guarantee 98%!
If the drive is still plugged in, remove it. If any thing is being written to the drive it will be overwriting what used to be there and what may be recoverable.

thats why i said theoretically. he said it was a 1TB or 1000GB drive and after he formatted it he added 20GB. 20GB/1000GB equals .02 or 2%. so technically 98% of the drive is still free. im just trying to remain optimistic.

 

[WizardHunt]

thats why i said theoretically. he said it was a 1TB or 1000GB drive and after he formatted it he added 20GB. 20GB/1000GB equals .02 or 2%. so technically 98% of the drive is still free. im just trying to remain optimistic.

Actually I checked and I only wrote about 14 GB not 20 GB and my movies only took up about 269 GB and that was all that was on that drive. So I probably lost 14 GB of the 269 GB since I would not be so lucky as it wrote to any part of the part that had no data at all. I will be trying Data Rescue 3 and hope I get at least 75 % of it.

 

[ViciousShadow21]

Actually I checked and I only wrote about 14 GB not 20 GB and my movies only took up about 269 GB and that was all that was on that drive. So I probably lost 14 GB of the 269 GB since I would not be so lucky as it wrote to any part of the part that had no data at all. I will be trying Data Rescue 3 and hope I get at least 75 % of it.

anything is better than zero i suppose

 

[VPrime]

thats why i said theoretically. he said it was a 1TB or 1000GB drive and after he formatted it he added 20GB. 20GB/1000GB equals .02 or 2%. so technically 98% of the drive is still free. im just trying to remain optimistic.

That would be the case if hard drives stored information in one place.. A single file is usually in multiple "places" on a physical disk.. So chances are that 20gb has ruined A LOT of files.