How to recover a formatted partition?

So, I was right in the middle of reinstalling Windows—a process I haven't even touched in nearly a decade!—and wouldn't you know it, I made a massive blunder and formatted my drive by mistake.
The partition itself is about 360 GB, and it was roughly 85% full at the time. Just to be clear, this wasn't my system partition; it was mostly just my media stash—you know, movies, photos, MP3s, all that good stuff.
Does anyone have a solid recommendation for software that might actually stand a chance at pulling my data back from the brink?
I've already played around with a few options, like Norton, which did manage to find some bits and pieces, but there's a huge catch—it won't give me the actual filenames or folder structures! Instead, it just spits out cryptic nonsense like "f152." How am I supposed to organize anything like that?
I also gave Recuva a shot, and while it didn't perform too badly, it only managed to recover just over 50% of my files. So, what do you think? Can anyone suggest a better tool, and honestly, what are the realistic odds of me getting most of my data back?

EaseUS Data Recovery is pretty reliable; you can expect to recover at least 90% of your files

shadowlynx102 said:EaseUS Data Recovery is pretty reliable; you can expect to recover at least 90% of your files

Does this software actually preserve the original filenames when it performs a recovery, or does it just rename everything to its own internal naming convention? I mean—it’s one thing if you're just hunting for a handful of photos or an MR3 file—but what happens when we’re talking about, say, a thousand MP3s plus a massive mountain of photos? It would be a total nightmare to have to manually hunt down every single filename! You know—I really wouldn't want to spend my entire day and night working through a recovery only to realize the files are all scrambled and unidentifiable. Is that how it works?

One more thing—some guy mentioned to me that since there was only about 15% free space left on the partition being recovered, it might be nearly impossible to salvage more than 60% of the data. How much truth is there to that claim?

It saves everything using the original filenames, and honestly, all that talk about free space is just nonsense. The only real rule you need to know is that you can't recover files back onto the exact same drive they were lost from—that should be pretty obvious to anyone doing this. For instance, if you plug in that external drive you're trying to rescue data from and it shows up as the E: drive, you just need to make sure you're saving the recovered files over to your C: or D: drive instead.

shadowlynx102 said:It saves everything using the original filenames, and honestly, all that talk about free space is just nonsense. The only real rule you need to know is that you can't recover files back onto the exact same drive they were lost from—that should be pretty obvious to anyone doing this. For instance, if you plug in that external drive you're trying to rescue data from and it shows up as the E: drive, you just need to make sure you're saving the recovered files over to your C: or D: drive instead.

I have been so incredibly preoccupied with data recovery lately—honestly, it’s been an absolute whirlwind!—that I haven't even had a spare moment to pop back in here on the forum. Can you believe how much time those lost files can suck up? It's been non-stop!

I’ve got about ten different recovery programs installed on this machine—seriously, why do I even have all these? My computer has been running non-stop all day long, just scanning and then scanning again... honestly, it's driving me absolutely insane!

So, I’ve been mulling this over—just tinkering around with the idea, really—and I think I’ve finally arrived at this suggestion of yours! Isn't it funny how those things happen? You start with one thought, wander off down a dozen different paths, and suddenly—presto!—you find yourself right back where you started, only with a much clearer perspective. Does that make sense? I certainly think it does! Has anyone here actually had any luck using EaseUS Data Recovery? I’ve been staring at my screen for what feels like an eternity—honestly, probably longer than it took me to finish that entire marathon in Chicago last year!—trying to figure out if this software actually delivers on its promises. Is it a lifesaver, or just another digital headache waiting to happen? I mean, when you're staring down the barrel of a corrupted drive, isn't every second feeling like a minute? I'm genuinely curious to hear if anyone has successfully pulled their files back from the brink with it!Honestly, I’ve run scans with that thing at least five or six times now—can you believe it?—and I am still nowhere near getting what I actually need! It’s just... frustrating, isn't it? To make matters worse, I haven't even been able to salvage a single file using it. Not one! It feels like I'm just spinning my wheels here.
The truth is—well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag! It seems like the software manages to sniff out more or less everything that used to live on that partition... which sounds like progress, right? But here is the kicker—the real headache—I can't actually open a single thing! Not within the program itself, and wouldn't you know it, even when I try to save them over to my computer, they remain completely inaccessible. Is there anyone else out there running into this kind of wall? It feels like I'm holding a treasure map to a chest that's been welded shut!

I’m probably missing something obvious in my settings—or maybe I just have the wrong options selected entirely? It feels like there's a tiny detail slipping through the cracks somewhere!
It just doesn't make sense—it’s simply impossible! How could I be unable to open even a single file when I have another program running right alongside it? It defies all logic, doesn't it? Recuva So, I managed to pull back about 60%—at least that’s what the software claims! And honestly? It’s actually working quite well; it opens a huge chunk of my files, including photos, and it even manages to recover some of those fragmented pieces sitting in Disk Drill. But here is where things get frustratingly weird—I tried using EaseUS Data Recovery, and it’s a total wash! I can't open a single thing they found—not one photo, not one video, not an MP3, not even a basic Word doc. It’s just... nothing! Why does one work while the other fails so spectacularly?

Look, I’m certainly not sitting here expecting some kind of miracle where every single byte magically reappears—I know how these things go!—but I really was hoping for something a bit more effective than this current mess. Is that too much to ask? Honestly, I just wanted a result that actually worked better than what I've been dealing with! ZeroRegarding the software...

I completely forgot to mention one crucial detail! Honestly, I was under the impression that formatting a partition meant everything was gone for good—poof, vanished into thin air! It was such a gut-wrenching thought, too, because I had this massive collection of MP3s from the '60s, '70s, and '80s tucked away in there... music history right on my drive! Once I finally pulled myself together the very next day, I started filling up that empty space—though, truth be told, I didn't stop at just a few gigabytes. In fact, once I realized I suddenly had over 300 GB of free space, I jumped right into Partition Manager and actually shifted some of the unallocated space from my D: drive over to the E: drive. Talk about a sudden upgrade! Anyway, when I told my nephew about the whole mess, he gave me a bit of a reality check. He told me that you can actually recover a significant amount of data from a formatted partition—provided, of course, that you haven't written anything new over it yet. Isn't that something?
So, I found myself diving headfirst into a deep-dive Google rabbit hole—you know how it goes!—and spent ages scouring every single tech forum I’m registered on, tossing out question after question... just trying to make sense of it all!

Like I mentioned before—and I really can't stress this enough—that Zero software actually managed to rescue about 60% of my data! Honestly, if I hadn't been busy re-uploading everything else in the meantime, that percentage probably would have been even higher, wouldn't it? It’s certainly a hell of a lot better than the absolute zero percent I was bracing myself for at the start! So, naturally, I was feeling quite optimistic—really riding that wave of hope—thinking that with the software you suggested, I might finally strike gold. But, oh boy, did I miss the mark! I think I must have botched the settings somehow... because, let's be logical here: if the files were truly, completely unreadable, then even Zero wouldn't have been able to sniff them out, right?
So, I was running a scan using just the default settings—you know, the "just do it for me" approach—and the whole thing wrapped up in less than five seconds! Can you believe that? But then, the moment I started toggling all those extra options and digging deeper... suddenly we’re looking at an hour-long marathon! Why does that even happen? It’s like the software decides to take a nap the second you ask it to actually do any real work!

Could you possibly lend me a hand? I’m feeling a bit lost in the weeds here—I've been tinkering away at my settings, but I can't quite put my finger on where everything went sideways! Any advice on where I might have tripped up would be absolutely wonderful!

Take a look at this here. If that doesn't do the trick for you, I'd suggest hunting down an English tutorial somewhere online.

shadowlynx102 said:Take a look at this here. If that doesn't do the trick for you, I'd suggest hunting down an English tutorial somewhere online.

Man, that link you sent over didn't help me one bit! I've gone through every single one of those options shown in the screenshot—seriously, I tried them all—and the result is pretty much the same, except maybe for how fast the scan runs. I even played around with the checkboxes in the settings, but it was all for nothing. Is it possible the issue is simply that the checkmarks need to be in the exact right spots, just like they appear in the picture?

link

Hmm, you might want to try this approach:
Try checking the "excessive search" box and selecting "recover lost files." Under the bad sector strategy, go ahead and pick "retry each sector," then make sure to check "allow duplicate file names" and uncheck the "quick scan" option. For the settings on the right side, select "systematic file system damage." Also, just as a heads-up—and I really can't stress this enough—you absolutely cannot save the recovered data back onto the same drive or partition you're trying to rescue. For instance, if you're working on an E: drive that used to hold 150 GB of data, you’re going to need at least 150 GB of free space over on your C: or D: drive to have somewhere to put everything.
Edit: I actually found a PDF in English that walks through these steps in much more detail: http://www.runtime.org/howto_datarecovery.pdf

shadowlynx102 said:Hmm, you might want to try this approach:
Try checking the "excessive search" box and selecting "recover lost files." Under the bad sector strategy, go ahead and pick "retry each sector," then make sure to check "allow duplicate file names" and uncheck the "quick scan" option. For the settings on the right side, select "systematic file system damage." Also, just as a heads-up—and I really can't stress this enough—you absolutely cannot save the recovered data back onto the same drive or partition you're trying to rescue. For instance, if you're working on an E: drive that used to hold 150 GB of data, you’re going to need at least 150 GB of free space over on your C: or D: drive to have somewhere to put everything.
Edit: I actually found a PDF in English that walks through these steps in much more detail: http://www.runtime.org/howto_datarecovery.pdf

Oh, I am well aware of the golden rule regarding not saving data to the same disk during a recovery process! I actually ran into that exact issue once before when I was trying to pull deleted (not formatted, mind you!) files off a thumb drive and a camera SD card. However, I had never attempted a recovery after a full format... because, as I mentioned earlier in my previous post, I was under the impression that formatting meant the sectors were completely wiped clean and gone forever! But now I know better—though, fingers crossed, I won't have to test this theory again anytime soon!
My big blunder, in addition to the formatting itself, was that I started moving other stuff onto that same partition—which will likely tank my success rate—but as I said, even a 60% success rate is infinitely better than 0%, right? And hey, if I manage to claw back even a few extra percent, I'll take it!

Wait, one quick thing—when you mention selecting systematic file system damage on the image to the right, doesn't that refer to the system partition?
If that's the case, I should clarify that we aren't dealing with the system partition here; this is just a secondary partition where most of my media files live.

I followed your advice to the letter! I checked all those boxes just like you instructed—but, well, after all that work, I’m still coming up empty-handed. I ended up losing about an hour of my life (the scan took a little over sixty minutes, though I have to ask—why did you mention in that tutorial from the top link that a scan could drag on for up to ten hours? Even with all those options enabled, I didn't hit the hour-and-a-half mark!) and yet... nothing. There was a tiny bit of progress, if you can call it that; I managed to open a few files, but honestly, everything is completely scrambled! It’s a total mess—for instance, I try to open a track by John Smith, and instead, Pink Floyd starts playing!
On the other hand, some of the files that Zero actually managed to recover open just fine, whereas when I try using EaseUS Data Recovery, those exact same files either won't open at all or they just throw an error at me.
So, I've just kicked off another scan using that last option shown in the image on the right, keeping the same settings from the left one. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Honestly, even this method hasn't moved the needle at all—I'm still staring at these corrupted files that look like broken junk, and then there are those files that Recuva opens just fine, yet this one refuses to budge!
It’s starting to feel like I’ll just have to settle for whatever 60% of what Zero can pull out of thin air, because this whole scanning process is turning into an absolute nightmare—seriously, I'm having actual bad dreams about data recovery, and let's be real, I've never exactly been a natural at this stuff, have I?

I don't know, maybe you're just an outlier because I’ve used Get Data Back at least a dozen times now, and I usually manage to pull back about 90% of everything every single time. As for why it took you ten hours, honestly, it all comes down to how much data you were trying to rescue and how fast your computer actually is; I’ve had sessions where it felt like it was running for twenty hours straight.

shadowlynx102 said:I don't know, maybe you're just an outlier because I’ve used Get Data Back at least a dozen times now, and I usually manage to pull back about 90% of everything every single time. As for why it took you ten hours, honestly, it all comes down to how much data you were trying to rescue and how fast your computer actually is; I’ve had sessions where it felt like it was running for twenty hours straight.

I mean, I wouldn't say my setup is anything special—just a basic dual-core processor, a 1GB graphics card, and 2GB of RAM—but even then, none of my scans with Get Data Back ever dragged on for more than an hour and a half. Even this Zero tool finished in under two hours.
The partition size was roughly 328GB on a 500GB HDD. It was about 85% full—mostly movies, TV shows, music videos, and various YouTube tutorials... oh, and some stuff recorded on my phone, totaling around 230GB. The rest was just photos, a few programs, and some Office docs like Word, Excel, and PDFs.
I'm not sure if you were trying to recover deleted files or a fully formatted drive, but in my experience, Zero actually performed better than Get Data Back! Maybe I messed up a setting somewhere, but who knows?
Honestly, if I had managed to pull even 70% from Get Data Back, I would have been thrilled—it's still better than the 60% I got from Zara—but instead, I ended up getting almost nothing at all.
Zero probably would have pulled even more (like I mentioned before!) if I hadn't kept recording new footage after the format. Plus, I resized the partition, so I likely wiped out some data just by doing that.

If I were to run a defrag on a partition that’s already been formatted—would that actually be more harmful than helpful, or would there be some kind of benefit?

analogwalker2 said:If I were to run a defrag on a partition that’s already been formatted—would that actually be more harmful than helpful, or would there be some kind of benefit?

More harm. The more you mess with a partition, the worse it gets.

I’ve always made it a point to restore data back onto a partition where nothing else has been messed with besides the initial formatting. Honestly, I suspect if you tried running a defrag on it, things would probably just get even messier. You might just have to settle for that 60% recovery rate. The only other thing I’d suggest—assuming you can get your hands on it—is giving Recuva a shot; it’s actually worked quite well for me in a few different situations before.

analogwalker2 said:I followed your advice to the letter! I checked all those boxes just like you instructed—but, well, after all that work, I’m still coming up empty-handed. I ended up losing about an hour of my life (the scan took a little over sixty minutes, though I have to ask—why did you mention in that tutorial from the top link that a scan could drag on for up to ten hours? Even with all those options enabled, I didn't hit the hour-and-a-half mark!) and yet... nothing. There was a tiny bit of progress, if you can call it that; I managed to open a few files, but honestly, everything is completely scrambled! It’s a total mess—for instance, I try to open a track by John Smith, and instead, Pink Floyd starts playing!
On the other hand, some of the files that Zero actually managed to recover open just fine, whereas when I try using EaseUS Data Recovery, those exact same files either won't open at all or they just throw an error at me.
So, I've just kicked off another scan using that last option shown in the image on the right, keeping the same settings from the left one. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Once, I was trying to pull about a terabyte of data off a 2TB external drive. That was ages ago and I don't remember the specifics, but I think it took two or three days. So, ten hours isn't really that big of a deal.

That aside... if you try to play Elvis Presley and you hear Pink Floyd, then what exactly is the issue? 😉
Now, if you clicked on "One of These Days" and suddenly heard Elvis Presley—THAT would be a problem. 🙂

Now, if you'll indulge me for a moment—I find myself stuck on a bit of a conundrum! Could someone please help me clear up this one nagging doubt?
Last night, I headed out once again to run a scan on my computer—because, honestly, can you ever really be too careful when it comes to digital hygiene? It’s one of those things that just stays on the back of your mind, isn't it? Always wondering if there's some hidden gremlin lurking in the code... anyway, I was deep into the process when I realized... Zero Assumption Recovery So, now I’m going to run a comparison against that data I just finished scanning with it—and get this—suddenly a whole bunch of files are popping up that definitely weren't there a moment ago! But wait, it gets even weirder... some of the files I was literally opening just last night have completely vanished into thin air! Isn't that just something? One minute everything is right where you left it, and the next, it's like a digital disappearing act!
If a file is corrupted, honestly—why would anyone even want to deal with it now or ever? It’s just dead weight!

wiredcanyon94 said:Once, I was trying to pull about a terabyte of data off a 2TB external drive. That was ages ago and I don't remember the specifics, but I think it took two or three days. So, ten hours isn't really that big of a deal.

That aside... if you try to play Elvis Presley and you hear Pink Floyd, then what exactly is the issue? 😉
Now, if you clicked on "One of These Days" and suddenly heard Elvis Presley—THAT would be a problem. 🙂

Which software did you end up using for the scan? And—if you actually went through with that Get Data tool—could you walk me through your process? I mean, could you give me a real step-by-step breakdown of exactly what you did?

Well, just like I mentioned to shadowlynx102 after running that scan with GetData—I honestly couldn't open a single file! Not even one! It wouldn't even launch the ones that Zero actually managed to locate... can you believe that?

analogwalker2 said:Now, if you'll indulge me for a moment—I find myself stuck on a bit of a conundrum! Could someone please help me clear up this one nagging doubt?
Last night, I headed out once again to run a scan on my computer—because, honestly, can you ever really be too careful when it comes to digital hygiene? It’s one of those things that just stays on the back of your mind, isn't it? Always wondering if there's some hidden gremlin lurking in the code... anyway, I was deep into the process when I realized... Zero Assumption Recovery So, now I’m going to run a comparison against that data I just finished scanning with it—and get this—suddenly a whole bunch of files are popping up that definitely weren't there a moment ago! But wait, it gets even weirder... some of the files I was literally opening just last night have completely vanished into thin air! Isn't that just something? One minute everything is right where you left it, and the next, it's like a digital disappearing act!
If a file is corrupted, honestly—why would anyone even want to deal with it now or ever? It’s just dead weight!

Which software did you end up using for the scan? And—if you actually went through with that Get Data tool—could you walk me through your process? I mean, could you give me a real step-by-step breakdown of exactly what you did?

Well, just like I mentioned to shadowlynx102 after running that scan with GetData—I honestly couldn't open a single file! Not even one! It wouldn't even launch the ones that Zero actually managed to locate... can you believe that?

I can't really walk you through it step-by-step because I honestly don't remember. It was ages ago.
Yeah, I’ve messed around with that software before. I spent some time digging through the help files and picking up a few tips online, and eventually, it actually worked. It was a bit of a slog, though—it took forever because I was dealing with a massive amount of data on an external drive connected via USB.

My mission to rescue all that data after formatting the partition was finally wrapped up a few days ago—and honestly, I’m sitting down to write this primarily because I just have to say a massive thank you to everyone who stepped up to help me out! You all were absolutely incredible.

To be perfectly honest—and I mean truly, brutally honest here—I didn't manage to pull everything back from the brink. I’d say I salvaged maybe 60%? Honestly, if I hadn't been so reckless as to start dumping new files onto that partition right after formatting, I probably would have seen a much higher success rate! But hey, mistakes were made, right? On top of that little blunder, I went ahead and started messing around with resizing the partition size—which, in hindsight, was probably not my brightest idea—and there's one more thing I completely forgot to mention until just now! It likely played a massive role in why the recovery was so hit-or-miss: that partition had actually been compressed a few years back just to squeeze a bit more storage space out of it. Who would have thought that would come back to haunt me like this?

Look, even if we’re only talking about a 60% success rate—which, let's be honest, is still a massive leap from that absolute zero I was bracing for at the start—it is infinitely better than nothing! Am I repeating myself? Perhaps! But can you blame me when the outlook has shifted so drastically? It’s a total game-changer!

And I really must take a moment to reflect—just for a second!—on the one specific program that actually saved my skin (aside from all your incredible recommendations, of course). I’ve honestly cycled through at least ten different ones by now, and let me tell you, most of them were a total waste of time! Sure, they would "find" things, if you can even call it that... but what was the catch? Well, everything they recovered was completely anonymous! Instead of getting an actual artist's name or a song title, I’d just be staring at some useless string of gibberish like "f12489." Can you imagine how frustrating that is? What good is a file if you have no idea what it actually is?
And honestly, if you end up with something like that—say, two thousand MP3 files—it’s basically useless, isn't it? I mean, who on earth has the patience to sit there and manually comb through two thousand individual tracks just to figure out what song is actually playing? It’s just not practical!

In the end—and I really mean this—I walked away most satisfied with that specific program I mentioned back in my earlier comments... you know the one! It’s called... Zero Assumption Recovery Some people kept pointing me toward GetData Recovery—as if that was some kind of magic wand! But like I said before, I didn't get much out of it at all. It’s quite frustrating, really! Sure, it would actually "find" the data, but then what? Every single file I tried to open either refused to budge or just threw a massive error message right in my face. Maybe I didn't configure the settings quite right, or perhaps there's some deeper technical glitch at play here—who knows? It’s such a headache!

Now, I have to say—Zero Assumption Recovery did an absolutely stellar job here! It wasn’t just that the software managed to locate all the data by specific names and surnames; it went even further than that—it actually organized everything perfectly into the exact folders where they originally belonged! Isn't that just incredible?

So, I decided to put it through its paces—really give it a workout! I took an external HDD and dedicated one 30GB partition to being a total dumping ground. I crammed absolutely everything onto it—videos, documents, music, software, you name it—until there wasn't a single byte of space left! Once it was completely maxed out, I ran a full format just to see how it would handle the stress. Does that sound like overkill? Maybe! But sometimes you just have to push things to the limit to see what they're made of, right?
I finally fired up Zero Assumption Recovery, and—get this—it actually pulled back nearly 100% of my data! It’s a total win! But, I have to ask myself... is it really fair to compare filling, formatting, and recovering everything in a single afternoon to a partition that’s been getting filled and wiped for years on end? There’s just no comparison, right?

I just wanted to jump back in here one more time—really!—to say a massive thank you to everyone who was so incredibly helpful with their suggestions. You all truly went above and beyond, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it! Also, I absolutely have to give a glowing, heartfelt recommendation for this recovery software... it’s honestly a lifesaver! Zero Assumption Recovery