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Accidentally formatted 3TB harddrive

Posted: 25 Apr 2012, 18:00
by htsui
I recently purchased a HP N40L microserver. Installed Microsoft Storage Server 2008 r2 on it. So today I try to transferred my harddrive into the server. My external harddrive is Seagate GoFlex external 3TB harddrive formatted with one single partition with NTFS.

Once I plugged it into the server it is not recognised. I asked a friend and he told me to go to Computer Management and set it to GPT. Afterward everything is gone. So I plug it back to the external harddrive and switch it back to MBR, the data is still not there, then I switch it back to the server and set it to GPT again.

Now I realise I have formatted it 3 times, is it still possible to recover the data?

Re: Accidentally formatted 3TB harddrive

Posted: 25 Apr 2012, 20:43
by Fiona
Intel MBR only supports disks up to 2.2 TB.
If you try to write over the limit, windows can go back to the beginning and overwrite all your data.
These data are not recoverable anymore.
Please be careful.

Do you have any idea how your disk was partitioned before?
If you formatted your drive equal to your previous situation, you'd need data recovery software because your previous file system might be overridden, but your data should be still underlying in your sectors.
Don't write anything to your disk anymore.

Did you format your disk quick or normal?
Also, what OS did you use to format your disk?

Fiona