How to Regain Desktop and D Drive Data After Installing Windows 10

winleon · 18 Apr 2017

Hello Guys
I am in trouble with my Windows 10 PC. Below is my problem description:
My ASUS Laptop Model Number: UX303U Notebook PC
When I bought it from the shop, they gave me the backup of windows 10 in a pen drive. A few days back I reinstall windows 10 by booting the pc from pen drive. But before that, I Disable “secure boot menu option ” and Enable “ Launch CSM” . Then I follow the installation instruction as usual.

Now after the installation finished I found that there is only one drive ( C drive ) in the PC !! All my D drive data and desktop files are gone!!

Total headbang situation....

Is there any way I can get back my D drive data and desktop data?

Any expert here?

dalchina · 18 Apr 2017

I imagine you've done a clean installation of Win 10. That will give you exactly what MS supplies, so all your personal data will have been wiped. Now assuming your D: was a second partition and you only have one drive, I can only think you have formatted the whole drive or deleted all partitions as part of the installation process.

Note that it's perfectly possible to keep a D: partition and clean install to a C: partition if you choose to do so.

Just to check, please post a screenshot of Disk Management (Windows key + X, Disk Management).

Backups are essential. Hard disks fail. PCs become unbootable. Ransomware can make everything inaccessible.

We strongly and repeatedly recommend disk imaging to an external disk (e.g. Macrium Reflect (free) ) - the images serve both as backups and allow you to rescue yourself when things go wrong probably without technical help.

winleon · 18 Apr 2017

Thanks for your reply. Here is the screenshot:

How to Regain Desktop and D Drive Data After Installing Windows 10-screenshot.jpg

dalchina · 18 Apr 2017

Hi, that looks like a clean UEFI install - so I imagine you chose to format the drive when installing Win 10.

Note there are other possible actions besides a clean install and using the manufacturer's recovery partition (if any):
Refresh
Reset
An in-place upgrade repair install (which keeps basically everything and reverts Windows to the base build of the installed build).

You can find details of these in the extensive and professional Tutorial section.

winleon · 18 Apr 2017

So I assume that there is no way I can retrieve the lost data? All are gone ?

winleon · 18 Apr 2017

dalchina said:

Hi, that looks like a clean UEFI install - so I imagine you chose to format the drive when installing Win 10.

Note there are other possible actions besides a clean install and using the manufacturer's recovery partition (if any):
Refresh
Reset
An in-place upgrade repair install (which keeps basically everything and reverts Windows to the base build of the installed build).

You can find details of these in the extensive and professional Tutorial section.

Dear dalchina

Thanks for your reply. Can you please give me the tutorial link which i can follow ? That will be mighty helpful for me .

Cheers !

dalchina · 18 Apr 2017

Barring a professional data recovery company (expensive!!!) - yes. But think of the benefit- you will now start to back up and hopefully use disk imaging.

Which doesn't make the loss any easier.

Windows 10 Tutorial Index - Windows 10 Tutorials

Tutorial section listed alphabetically
Windows 10 Tutorial Index - Windows 10 Tutorials

Open that in your browser.
search for
in-place -> in-place upgrade repair install
reset Windows 10 -> reset, refresh

A basic intro to disk imaging with Macrium Reflect:
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect - Windows 10 Backup Restore Tutorials
(There are videos in the video section, and a huge range of info on Macrium's site).