Drives not shown/usable..

[Orion_hsl]

Hi,

In my Lenovo laptop, I tried to format a Pendrive to make it a 'Bootable'
for another purpose. In my rush I have mistakenly given the wrong source
& now I only see the Primary drive (Iie: C drive only) in this Notebook PC!.

I have Win7 OS in this.

The PC (Notebook) works ok & this is done thro the same machine! Since the
OS is there in C it works fine!. But I can not see my extended drives!!.

When I go to [My]Computer -> Manage (by rightclicking) Storage-> Disk Management.. I can see the presence of my other drives.

How can I recover these drives pls.? with all my valuable data??

Pls. advice.

Thanks in advance.

Orion_hsl

[Paul Komski]

You can still presumably see them because the partitions are still there but they have somehow been formatted by mistake. Formatting partitions does not immediately destroy all the data on a drive - though a small amount may be overwritten by the metadata created for the newly formatted area.

There other approaches and software but for the job in hand I would highly recommend GetDataBack for NTFS (http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm).

It costs nothing to scan the said drive or partitions and see what is recoverable. Thereafter it is free to recover files one by one but you must pay to recover whole batches of files in one go.

If you decide to use GDBforNTFS be absolutely sure you recover to another hard drive (eg external) or pen drive of adequate size and not to the drive you want to recover things from.

[Orion_hsl]

Thanks a lot Paul, for this valuable advice.

I am using same Notebook to type this reply. Shall I download it to 'C' of this?
& run the .exe from it??

[Paul Komski]

The very best approach is to take the hard-drive out of the desktop and recover, whilst attached internally or externally to another PC from where you would run the program.

Since your C: drive is OK it is not ideal but it is acceptable to run the recovery from that partition but bear in mind to save any data to another device. Read any help or manual before beginning or post back if unsure.

[FTT]

How much free space on C:/ ?

Yes. Install GDB onto your OS. Once installed you can use external media as a destination if need be, but sometimes doing batches onto your primary (C: ) drive is fine as well as long as you transfer it to portable media and the delete and continue the recovery..

I had a system going one time (or thrice ;) ) where I had all my viewing apps in the task bar. In the results of GDB you'll see the type of file involved. Using a right click or using one from the taskbar, you can open the file, then Save-As. Be sure to set the Save-As location to your media of choice.

You'll need a picture application such as Paint, Photoshop etc. for pics,, Word or similar for docs, VLC, MPCHC or WMP for movies and so forth. The speed of Get Data Back is mostly reliant on read and writes plus your decision on where to store them in the free version. The better your plan with a touch of coordinatin', the faster you'll GitterDun :p

[Paul Komski]

You'll need a picture application such as Paint, Photoshop etc. for pics,, Word or similar for docs, VLC, MPCHC or WMP for movies and so forth.
The reason for this is that if you want to use the free, one-by-one, restorations you have to open the file in its application and then save it from that application.

There is a generic application that can open all files and that is a hex editor. Tiny Hexer (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Miscellaneous/tiny-hexer.shtml) is a freebie that does this job very well,

[Orion_hsl]

Thanx again for this caution. I shall reach you for further
advice, in case this procedure needs any clarifications
on the go. Regards.