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A few days ago I used my 4TB HDD external hard drive to re-install windows and unknowingly made 1 TB of files on that hard drive disappear - windows created 32GB bootable windows installation files instead and the rest of the space now is shown as "unallocated".

I want to recover the partition that was lost so I launched a quick analysis but 48 hours later I'm still on 8%. With this speed, it'll take me 23 days to finish it And what if I need a deep analysis? It'll take me a few months? What can be done to speed up the process?

I've also selected “Better performance” and checked the “Enable write caching on the device” checkbox from the Device Manager.

Has anything been done wrong?

Here is the screenshot


Laptop's specifications:
- Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
- Thunderbolt port
- SD card only (no ExpressCard)

My Seagate hard drive's specifications:
is in a metal external enclosure
USB 3.0
4TB (actual 3.63TB and 2.64 was free, 0.99 was occupied)
Memory type: DDR3L-1600 SDRAM
Flash Memory Size: 4
Max Data Transfer: 120MB/s

At home, I have 2 desktop computers and another 2 laptops (a new Mac and PC).

Andy86 wrote: 28 Jan 2021, 02:10 I want to recover the partition that was lost so I launched a quick analysis but 48 hours later I'm still on 8%. With this speed, it'll take me 23 days to finish it And what if I need a deep analysis? It'll take me a few months? What can be done to speed up the process?
Has anything been done wrong?
....
Laptop's specifications:
- Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
- Thunderbolt port

My Seagate hard drive's specifications:
USB 3.0
4TB (actual 3.63TB and 2.64 was free, 0.99 was occupied)
Memory type: DDR3L-1600 SDRAM
Flash Memory Size: 4
Max Data Transfer: 120MB/s

Your USB 2.0 port will deliver only 35-40 MB/sec whereas your Seagate drive will probably achieve a linear 100-120 MB/sec.
If you have a ExpressCard slot in your laptop you could install a USB 3.0 card which in my case with the old Thinkpad T-series increased throughput to 70-80 MB/sec. To further speed up the read speed you would need to use a desktop computer.
If your Seagate drive did not come in an external enclosure but rather "naked" you could use a docking station or even put the drive into a desktop computer.

Unfortunately, my External Hard Drive HDD is in a metal enclosure so I won't be able to use it with a docking station or put it into a desktop computer.

Also, I only have a SD card slot.

Any other suggestions?

Buy a new computer.