# Accidentally formatted my D: Drive.



## Shockey Rai (Jun 22, 2013)

I accidentally formatted my computer's D: Drive while i was using Wii Backup Manager when i meant to format one of my External Hard Drives. (My Computer's main Drive is C: )
Is it bad that my D: Drive got formatted by accident?

My laptop computer is a Compaq Presario CQ57-2299WM Notebook PC


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 22, 2013)

The data is recoverable, assuming you haven't started writing new files to the hard drive.  All those 1s and 0's on the HDD were not refreshed into an endless row of meaningless 0's, because that actually takes HOURS.  The efficient way is used instead, the formatting puts new file system info at the start and end of the partition, then marks everything in between as deleted, but nothing is actually written over until new files are written to those physical locations on the hard drive.  Meaning, if you formatted your drive, then left it the heck alone, everything is pretty easily recoverable.

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

GetDataBack ACTUALLY WORKS on drives that have been reformatted or erased files, so long as you didn't overwrite the drive with new stuff later or 'zero' the disk.  However, as there's no table from the old file system as to where the files were on the drive, it will need to scan the disk bit by bit and figure out what's there.  THEN it'll need a DIFFERNET drive to move the recovered files to.

Good luck.


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## Sparklepaws (Jun 22, 2013)

When I saw this thread's title, I read it as "I accidentally formatted my unhappy face drive".

The unhappy face drive shouldn't be a problem if it's formatted, but that really depends on what you were using it for in the first place (or at all). You can still recover data with the right know-how, as Ashley said.


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## Runefox (Jun 22, 2013)

The D: drive is difficult to call as to what its function was, since it wouldn't be a standard drive. Usually, on a Compaq / HP (or other OEM computer), this would have been the recovery partition. Assuming you have your recovery already backed up onto DVD's, this is a non-issue, but if not, you may want to unformat that drive using something like EaseUS Partition Recovery (free).


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