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Rob zombie

Rob zombie

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I have just done something INCREDIBLY STUPID. I can't even believe it.

I was swapping around harddrives and I appear to have formatted the wrong disk. Holy ****....kill me now!!!!

What's my best chances for recovery???? Help!!!
 
google it. there are loads of software that will get you recovered. recoverit etc.

do not save anything to the newly formatted drive just now though!!!


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I'm running Stellar Data Recovery now. I don't know if it will suddenly demand £1,000,000 for the data...but I will rob a bank if I have to. Even just to get back today's lost work!
 
First and foremost, do not do anything else with that disk.
Unless you have low-level formatted it (which would take hours) you have only marked each sector as OK to overwrite, you have not actually overwritten anything.
If you start writing to it, you will.

Get something like Recoverit or EaseUS's recovery tool, install it on a different drive and pull the data back to another location.
 
I did actually untick 'Quick Format'. It was running for about 20-30secs before I noticed it was the wrong drive and stopped it. So it didn't complete it's process. I'm just running Stellar Data Recovery now to see what that comes back with. I'll try the one's you mentioned if that doesn't work.
 
That disk was Bit-Locked so I don't know if that will make it easier or harder to recover.
 
TBH, I've not ever attempted to recover from exactly this situation, but the 'junk' could well be the encrypted data restored in it's encrypted format so you may have better luck with a the BitLocker aware one.
My main concern is the fact it was a full format, even 20-30 seconds can do a quite a bit of zeroing, crossed fingers that it wasn't the area you're after.🤞

Not going to help you recover anything, but might be a good plan to get a suitable Backup/DR strategy in place - mistakes happen and disks can fail without warning anyway
Backup/Replicate to either a NAS or a cloud service (assuming you have a decent internet connection)
Have it automated at an interval where you'd be happy to loose the work done in the meantime and test you can restore stuff from it every so often.
 
ChrisH said:
TBH, I've not ever attempted to recover from exactly this situation, but the 'junk' could well be the encrypted data restored in it's encrypted format so you may have better luck with a the BitLocker aware one.
My main concern is the fact it was a full format, even 20-30 seconds can do a quite a bit of zeroing, crossed fingers that it wasn't the area you're after.🤞

Not going to help you recover anything, but might be a good plan to get a suitable Backup/DR strategy in place - mistakes happen and disks can fail without warning anyway
Backup/Replicate to either a NAS or a cloud service (assuming you have a decent internet connection)
Have it automated at an interval where you'd be happy to loose the work done in the meantime and test you can restore stuff from it every so often.
Click to expand...

Yes I'm assuming the folders are all the encrypted stuff. I don't think I'll be able to unencrypt them in this state. I'm praying for this Bitlocker recovery one to work.

The crazy thing is that the act of upgrading my backup capability is what caused it in the first place. I bought two 10TB drives for backups and was formatting them. I had changed the drive details on the first one and was just formatting the 2nd when I realised it had shifted place in the list and I had actually clicked format on the wrong drive. ****ing unbelievable. I don't think there's anything too critical on that drive other than some work from yesterday for a client. I've already shown them too, so if I can't recover the drive I'll have to spend all day Sunday trying to recreate that piece of work ready for Monday. And all night tonight downloading a massive database. aaargh
 
Got my fingers crossed for you!

This stuff is so easily done..... could be worse though by the sound of it, a massive pain rather than a complete disaster.

If you've got your backups and primary data in the same box you're vulnerable to ransomware or similar issues that can hit all connected drives

I'd get a NAS and put your 2x10TB in there in RAID1 and use that as a backup target, and I'd also do an additional cloud backup and then ideally an additional copy on a pair of USB HDDs you can rotate so one is always unplugged.

(Apologies if I'm telling you stuff you already know/have in place, but at work DR planning is a drum I am constantly banging, so its a force of habit!)
 
With locker I’d be amazed if you can recover anything - if you can then WTF is the point of bit locker?


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Neil McRae said:
With locker I’d be amazed if you can recover anything - if you can then WTF is the point of bit locker?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...

It asks for your password to unlock the drive first before it starts scanning.
 
I've got three different apps currently trying to salvage that drive. Running EaseUS, M3 Data Recovery and Stellar. I don't really have much hope for this now. The Bitlocker one ran for hours but couldn't find a thing. Stellar was running last night all night and salvaged several hundred gb. Unfortunately none of it is usable as it's just a load of folders containing odd file extensions plus a load of zip files containing files with names like #() & £@)(£#&&@:')

Ahhh ****.
 
its trashed the MBR by sound of it, had this at work, i thought there was a backup of it kept somewhere on the disk, but its a loooooooooong time since i had to tackle this level of recovery. :(
 
Yeah.........it looks like I won't be having a weekend in any way shape or form. FuuuuuuuuuuuucccckkkkkkkkkkK
 
There's literally just ONE file on that entire disk that I need. Yesterday's work. Goddamit.
 
Well, that's an entire day wasted trying to recover that disk. Another £70. So £140 in total and not a single usable file recovered. I'm starting to have some really dark and worrying thoughts. So I think it's time to just accept what's done is done and crack on tomorrow.
 
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