Recuva recovery from unallocated HD space?

[Stonefeather]

I have a one TB external hard drive, originally formatted with FAT32, which I accidentally installed a Windows 10 Recovery Drive onto (I had meant to use a 16 GB thumb drive that I also had attached). This ran a format on the drive, but only set up a 32 GB FAT32 partition to use for the Recovery Drive, leaving the rest of the space unallocated. I was able, I think, to find and select this latter in the list of drives to scan with Recuva, but when I tried it, I got a message saying that it could not be scanned because Recuva was unable to determine its file system. Is there any way to tell Recuva that this unallocated space was originally FAT 32, so that it can do a deep scan, as it would with an entirely formatted drive?

[Augeas]

I don't think that Windows allows FAT32 partitions greater than 32 gb, how large was the partition on the 1 tb disk? How did you get Recuva to recognise the remaining part of the disk? Recuva requires a drive letter to function.

But the crux is that without a file system Recuva won't be able to do anything. Don't let that stop you trying the various options, scan for non-deleted files etc. You might be lucky, and it's something to do on Christmas Day when the TV is rubbish.

[Andavari]

Windows built in format tool won't allow formatting drives larger than 32GB with FAT32, however third party partitioning tools like EaseUs and MiniTool, etc., will - although that doesn't answer the question of recovery.

[Kobus]

On 25/12/2019 at 10:26, Stonefeather said:

I have a one TB external hard drive, originally formatted with FAT32, which I accidentally installed a Windows 10 Recovery Drive onto (I had meant to use a 16 GB thumb drive that I also had attached). This ran a format on the drive, but only set up a 32 GB FAT32 partition to use for the Recovery Drive, leaving the rest of the space unallocated. I was able, I think, to find and select this latter in the list of drives to scan with Recuva, but when I tried it, I got a message saying that it could not be scanned because Recuva was unable to determine its file system. Is there any way to tell Recuva that this unallocated space was originally FAT 32, so that it can do a deep scan, as it would with an entirely formatted drive?

I have nearly the same problem apart from that I wanted to upgrade my win 7 to win 10 due to the support issue of microsoft. I have  a 2TB external drive connected with ALL my backup info. Unfortunately when the upgrade requested a target to save the win 10 ISO file, I directed it to the External drive.

The whole External Drive was overwritten with the ISO file and my backup info gone. I have scanned the drive with EaseUs, but it does not give the folders. It did find the files though, but it would be a major task to sift through all the data to try and recover the files.

 

The External Drive was previously Drive "i" now it is "g" with the windows 10 iso file.

I have downloaded recoverit, which shows folders although the folders are not properly organised.

 

Now I am busy scanning with Minitool as well as Recuva.

I have not purchased any of these software yet. I first want to see whether it can do what I want it to do.

Will Recuva be able to recover the files on the lost partition in folders as recoverit does?

Regards

Kobus

 

 

 

[Kobus]

Seems it can not do what I want

[Andavari]

Possibly the problem was because the hard disk was formatted as FAT32? I don't know in particular though.

If you used that Microsoft tool to create Windows 10 installation media I thought it stated it would either format or overwrite all data on the drive, at least I think that's what it states when using a USB Flash Drive.

It's a very horrible lesson learned, worth investing in cheap USB 3.0 Flash Drives for Windows 10 installation media!