Accidental reformatting of ext HD

estherln · 08-06-2009, 12:57 AM

While reloading my XP, I forgot to remove my ext HD which was also switched on.

As a result of that, I accidentally partitioned my 500 GB ext HD into DR. E and Dr. F . The new Dr. E is abt 38gb and appeared to have been formatted by me. However the rest of the 462 gb are in Dr. F.

When I opened the Dr. F, the pc kept asking me to reformat it and informed me that all info willl be lost if I do so.Now I'm in a dilemma.

My ext HD (Ovation) is split into 2 drives. There appear to be no files left in neither one of them. Dr. E has already been formatted but Dr. E has not . What can I do now to retrieve my 200gb of files stored in this ext HD without sending it to any repairman, as I do not want people to know the contents of all my files in case they get duplicated while being repaired.

Is my 32gb of files lost in Dr.E since it is already formatted?

How can I make the HD back into 1 drive instead of 2?

Please help and suggest alternatives.
Estherln

**raptor_pa** · 08-06-2009, 05:03 AM

At this point, scan the disk with r-studio or getdataback and copy the files they find out to another disk. Then in Disk Management, delete both partitions, recreate one new one and format it NTFS. The 32 GB file size sounds like you formatted FAT32 32 GB is the largest FAT32 partition Windows will format.

08-06-2009, 12:57 AM	#1 (permalink)
estherln Registered User Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 1 OS: xp	Accidental reformatting of ext HD While reloading my XP, I forgot to remove my ext HD which was also switched on. As a result of that, I accidentally partitioned my 500 GB ext HD into DR. E and Dr. F . The new Dr. E is abt 38gb and appeared to have been formatted by me. However the rest of the 462 gb are in Dr. F. When I opened the Dr. F, the pc kept asking me to reformat it and informed me that all info willl be lost if I do so.Now I'm in a dilemma. My ext HD (Ovation) is split into 2 drives. There appear to be no files left in neither one of them. Dr. E has already been formatted but Dr. E has not . What can I do now to retrieve my 200gb of files stored in this ext HD without sending it to any repairman, as I do not want people to know the contents of all my files in case they get duplicated while being repaired. Is my 32gb of files lost in Dr.E since it is already formatted? How can I make the HD back into 1 drive instead of 2? Please help and suggest alternatives. Estherln Last edited by estherln; 08-06-2009 at 01:02 AM.

08-06-2009, 05:03 AM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,853 OS: XP	Re: Accidental reformatting of ext HD At this point, scan the disk with r-studio or getdataback and copy the files they find out to another disk. Then in Disk Management, delete both partitions, recreate one new one and format it NTFS. The 32 GB file size sounds like you formatted FAT32 32 GB is the largest FAT32 partition Windows will format. __________________