Recover accidentally formatted partition


You accidentally formatted your hard drive or storage device. No need to panic. What you need is to perform a formatted data recovery, which can be done using Disk Doctors Windows Data recovery.

Identify few things before

  1. Have you formatted the drive to same file system for e.g. FAT to FAT or NTFS to NTFS?
  2. Have you formatted the drive to other file system i.e. FAT to NTFS and vice versa?

Formatting a drive to a same file system can be considered as “simple formatting, whereas formatting it from one file system to another becomes re-formatting. However, once drive is re-formatted, chances of data being overwritten are higher as compared to simple formatting. Know more about What happens when we format a drive?

Recovering data from simple formatting

(This process is also applicable to a partition or drive that has been formatted and Windows operating system is reloaded)

  • Launch the application
  • Select the option “Recover your data”
  • Select the physical drive containing formatted partition
  • Select the option “Display default partition(s)”
  • Select the logical drive that you have formatted
  • Let the software run first level of scan on this logical drive
  • Once scanning is over, you might not get the data of previously formatted drive, instead you will see data that was stored on newly formatted partition
  • Select the option “Turbo Scan” and let software scan the drive, once turbo scan process is over you should get the data from your old partition.

In case this process is not yielding the results that you were looking for, follow the process as mentioned below.

Recovering data from re-formatted partitions
  • If FAT partition has been formatted to NTFS, you need to select Disk Doctors FAT Data Recovery to recover your lost data
  • If NTFS partition has been formatted to FAT, you need to select Disk Doctors NTFS Data Recovery to recover your lost data
  • Launch the application
  • Select the option “Recover your data”
  • Select the physical drive containing formatted partition
  • Select the option “Search for lost partition(s)”
  • Select Thorough Scan” partition search method
  • Select the older logical drive that you have formatted
  • Let the software run first level of scan on this logical drive
  • Once scanning is over, you might not get the data of previously formatted drive, instead you will see data that was stored on newly formatted partition

Select the option “Turbo Scan” and let software scan the drive, once turbo scan process is over you should get the data from your old partition.