Accidentally formatted 3TB harddrive

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
Forum rules
When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Locked
Message
Author
htsui
Posts: 1
Joined: 25 Apr 2012, 17:51

Accidentally formatted 3TB harddrive

#1 Post 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?

User avatar
Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: Accidentally formatted 3TB harddrive

#2 Post 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

Locked