Did you follow directions similar to
these?
If you did what I think you did it is very possible that you did indeed lose some of your data. You said that it began to format and then you stopped it as soon as you saw it formatting?
If yes, the bad news is that the way a hard drive works is a file is kept at the very beginning of the drive that knows the locations of all the other files, like a table of contents. If you began to format but then aborted, the "table of contents" could have been wiped out.
Some of your files may still be on the drive, but Windows can't see them without that table of contents. The best way to get them back would be to use some form of data recovery software to get them back.
If you want your files back, DO NOT USE THE COMPUTER! The files will remain on the drive until they are overwritten by something else, like another file. The more you use the computer, the more likely it will be that you cannot recover the files. The best bet is to attach the hard drive to another computer and from another computer run a data recovery software program.
BMR777