Storage Drive Wiped after Fresh Install

waqasr · 23 Jun 2020

FIrst post here guys. So I just done a fresh w10 install from an old one as it had been a while and was slowing down alot. So i done my fresh install. Huge noob mistake that I didnt disconnect my storage drive (3tb sata). Now in my computer I saw my other storage drives, but my 3b western digital drive was showing up as 931gb and empty, I mistakenly transferred some data to it aswell.

After a while of installing programs I went to check on my 3tb drive and thats when I realised in explorer i shows as 931gb and the rest of the space is unallocated.

I can say with 100% certainty I did not wipe or erase my storage drive by accident, The data should be there untouched but for some reason the drive is now showing up as 1tb and rest unallocated. I currently have minitool running.

Is there anything else I can do? Surely windows has gone wrong somewhere or something is missing for this to happen.

Caledon Ken · 23 Jun 2020

Welcome to TenForums @waqasr

Any chance you were using Windows Storage spaces?

I wouldn't do much with that drive until someone with real data recovery experience comes along. I'll see if I can contact one.

waqasr · 23 Jun 2020

Thanks for the reply, but nope not using windows storage space. Well its running so ill just wait till its done.
Ive also been advised to try viewing he drive in ubuntu so ill try that if this recovery doesnt work. If all else fails I'll just have to send it off to a company.

jumanji · 23 Jun 2020

waqasr said:

.........I currently have minitool running. .......

That is a very ambiguos statement in not specifying which MiniTool program you are running, MiniTool Partition Wizard???? MiniTool Power data Recovery??????

Please note that a 1TB HDD will read as 931GB. Are you assuming a 1TB HDD as 3TB HDD?

If you are running MiniTool Partition Wizard 12 and in that Partition Recovery Wizard, at the end of the scan you will get a screen showing partitions found. Double click on those and check whether you can see the folders and files. Post the screenshot. Note: Even if it finds some relevant partitions, you will not be able to write it. You will need to get a licence for it. So just post a screenshot and close Partition Wizard.

Open Partition Wizard again, and post a screenshot of how your drives look in it. - The very first screen that appears when you launch PW 12.

Post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management. Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums ( Make sure you hide the Console Tree as well as the Action pane and adjust the seperators in the disk list so that all data is visible as indicated in this guidelines.)

These screenshots will let us know whether it is a 1TB drive or 3 TB drive.

When you have done this, please disconnect all secondary drives in the dektop.

Boot your PC. Does it boot?

If it does not boot, it would mean that the boot records most probably written into that 3Tb drive and it is then a job for Windows 10 experts here, to undo that and make Windows bootable with the primary disk. May be it will be prudent to reinstall Windows 10 afresh after disconnecting all the drives

Either way, once you are up and running, we shall deal with the corrupted 3 TB drive and check whether there is a possibility of recovering any data on it. ( as per your statement you have also written some data into it . If so that could have overwritten some of the original data.)

I won't do anything till it is confirmed that you can run Windows 10 from the primary disk alone and not in conjunction with that 3Tb drive.

Caledon Ken · 24 Jun 2020

Thanks jumanji for joining.

waqasr · 24 Jun 2020

jumanji said:

That is a very ambiguos statement in not specifying which MiniTool program you are running, MiniTool Partition Wizard???? MiniTool Power data Recovery??????

Please note that a 1TB HDD will read as 931GB. Are you assuming a 1TB HDD as 3TB HDD?

If you are running MiniTool Partition Wizard 12 and in that Partition Recovery Wizard, at the end of the scan you will get a screen showing partitions found. Double click on those and check whether you can see the folders and files. Post the screenshot. Note: Even if it finds some relevant partitions, you will not be able to write it. You will need to get a licence for it. So just post a screenshot and close Partition Wizard.

Open Partition Wizard again, and post a screenshot of how your drives look in it. - The very first screen that appears when you launch PW 12.

Post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management. Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums ( Make sure you hide the Console Tree as well as the Action pane and adjust the seperators in the disk list so that all data is visible as indicated in this guidelines.)

These screenshots will let us know whether it is a 1TB drive or 3 TB drive.

When you have done this, please disconnect all secondary drives in the dektop.

Boot your PC. Does it boot?

If it does not boot, it would mean that the boot records most probably written into that 3Tb drive and it is then a job for Windows 10 experts here, to undo that and make Windows bootable with the primary disk. May be it will be prudent to reinstall Windows 10 afresh after disconnecting all the drives

Either way, once you are up and running, we shall deal with the corrupted 3 TB drive and check whether there is a possibility of recovering any data on it. ( as per your statement you have also written some data into it . If so that could have overwritten some of the original data.)

I won't do anything till it is confirmed that you can run Windows 10 from the primary disk alone and not in conjunction with that 3Tb drive.

Whatever miniool sfotware it was I left it to run overnight and the pc restarted for some reason so Ive left that for now.
I know a 1tb will show as 931gb . Ive used another program which seems to have found my files called icare data recovery free. Its still doing its thing but Im not sure it has recovered everything as I feel like I had more stuff. I will post screenshots later when I can scan again using minitool partition wizard

Berton · 24 Jun 2020

A note on data recovery: several years ago a client lost their hard drive that held the company books. I'd heard of a company named Ontrack that works with bad drive, sent it to them and at the time there was a $150 evaluation charge that applied to the actual recovery cost. The total cost of the recovery for them was $350, well worth it but needless to say got convinced to do backups. I've heard of folks having a cost of upwards of $1000 mostly because of the large number of photos, music and videos saved and larger sizes of drives. Just something to consider.

waqasr · 24 Jun 2020

heres a screenshot of diskmanager and minitool.

Oh and I fully agree mate, I just went and brought this 4tb external to make a backup of my storage.

jumanji · 24 Jun 2020

Hi @waqasr.

How many partitions did you have in that 3TB drive?

I can see two volumes/partitions. E: 931.5 GB and D: 1116.5 GB and an unallocated space of 746.5 GB.

Looks like the drive has been initialised and formatted as an MBR drive instead of GPT and that is the reason why only 2GB could be used. Rest unallocated.

You should be able to access all data in drive E: 930GB . Confirm.

You won't be able to access any data in drive D: 1116.5GB since it is RAW - File system corrupted.

Just to check whether any data can be retrieved, download and run the trial version of GetDataBack Pro and scan the 1116.5 GB drive. If it shows your data you can open and check the integrity of the files. ( You cannot copy without a licence though) Data Recovery Software Products - Runtime Software Products

If you can see the data, you can then try the freeware TestDisk to try and repair the corrupted file system. If Volume Boot Record only is corrupted, it can be repaired/ recreated. If MFT is corrupt and Testdisk cannot repair, you have to use only the commercial software GetDataback or Active @ File Recovery.

Run Getdataback and check.

waqasr · 24 Jun 2020

Originally he drive had just 1 partition.
E: is empty apart from some data i copied over accidentally.

I Havent used getdataback but used another tool which confirmed the files are still on there. I will try testdisk to repair the drive.

Is there a guide on how to use testdisk to repair the drive? Thanks.