unformat a drive doh!

[TechSupp]

Well I suppose I had top do it one day or another by not concentrating! Built a pc ready to image it on to a usb disk and instead of formatting the usb disk ready for the image I formatted the drive I had just installed the software to and set up! Doh!!! I think I know the answer, its just bite the bullet and rebuild the drive but is there a way to unformat a drive so its usable again? Most things I've googled just save the data to another drive. I've not used the drive since so is it possible to reverse what I have done, if not I'll just have to bite the bullet!

 

Just a bit of extra info if it helps I did it using gparted, selected the drive, format, instantly job done...unfortunately!

Edited February 10, 2010 by TechSupp

[Dos_Box]

Not really. Even a quick format will wipe the MFT (Master File Table) which lists the drives contents and location. Time to get the disks out again I'm afraid.

[TechSupp]

Though as much, recovered files before from a formatted drive but the whole drive, think I was clutching at straws really Oh Well, we live and learn, at least thats sorted out what I'm doing tomorrow morning anyway!

[Dos_Box]

The files are still there, just the MFT has been wiped, which (and I happily stand to be corrected here) you can't undo.

[srochford]

NTFS Recovery, Recover deleted file, undelete files with DiskInternals has some software which might recover it.

 

Even though the MFT has gone, I seem to remember that you can recover directories and their contents - you just lose the name of the top level directory (but it's fairly easy to recognise the contents of \windows, \program files and \documents and settings)

 

Got to be worth a try :-)

[TechSupp]

Thanks but I think I'll leave it untill tomorrow now and start of with an image from a similar PC and take it from there.