Help!!! I accidently formatted the Windows Partition

I am in need of serious help. I accidentally formatted the windows partition. I was using easybcd to dual boot so basically on the restart I lost windows and wasn't able to boot into either windows or linux. Is my windows partition safe, I formatted it using Ubuntu, with right clicking and then choosing the format option.

 

I also tried recovering the mbr using the windows 7 recovery cd I think that might have made things worst.

 

was it a quick format or full/safe erase? If it was a quick format, I'd suggest not touching that partition and investigating some tools to restore the file tables. If it's the latter, you're most likely out of luck on this one

 

I'm pretty sure it was quick it took less than a minute.

 

thank god for dropbox....you may have some hope...I'll look

 

Do NOT make any changes to your filesystem, windows or Linux. Read this thread.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85593

 

KoldWar's advice is correct. You shouldn't make any more changes to the drive until you try and scan for the partition information, and see if it can be recovered. The archlinux thread referenced actually points to a bootable utility CD which contains lots of useful system utilities, called

Hirens' BootCD

Checking out the site and looking at the contents of the CD, they include several freeware utilities that may help you in your situation. You can download Hiren's BootCD and burn it, and then boot your computer with it, or can you can directly try one of the partition recovery tools from the CD. Which include;

Smart Partition Recovery
PartitionRecovery
Partition Find & Mount

If they don't work, or if you've done some writing to your drive and the data isn't reliably restored, you can check out some other utilities that can be purchased to recover your data. These include;

GetDataBack
Windows Data Recovery Software from Disk Doctors

and the one tool which can get back data when all other programs can't;

Spinrite


Good Luck..

 

I just wanted to thank everyone that posted, I successfully recovered all the files I needed. I'll try not to accidentally format things next time. When your using Linux I guess you can get lost with the speed it provides.

 

yes, Gparted is not very forgiving.

 

In another thread I recently read someone complaining about a missing trash bin function in some Linux program (I guess it was the Dropbox thread).
What happened to "think before you act"?

 

I was trying to format a USB guess i picked the wrong one. Is there a way I could lock formatting with a different password other than root?

 

That's why they put erasers on pencils I don't know how you could mistake a usb drive for your hard drive.....try to learn the nomenclature for removable and fixed drives....

 

There is no reasonable way.
1st: root can do anything. You can make it a bit harder but you cannot restrict root's access to something. You could set up another user with enhanced privileges for tasks you normally do as root but still restrict real destructive things like formatting to root. But once you got that sorted out into the very detail, you won't need that user anymore.
2nd: In fact formatting doesn't cover everything about data deletion. You could also use dd, cat or a bunch of other tools to accidentally overwrite data. You don't want to lock all those tools because you need them for other tasks too.

How do you know which one is a HDD and which one a USB key if all I tell you is that I have /dev/sda through /dev/sdf? Unfortunately that's all what most tools tell you.

 

Intersting question.
How about first mounting the drive and browsing the directory to see whats there; once it is confirmed that it is the usb drive, you can unmount and fire up gparted.

graycolor, how did you manage to recover the partition?

 

It's not foolproof, but you should get into the habit of using Volume Labels when you format partitions. At the minimum, label the partitions on your system's HDDs. That way when you go to format, you'll have some additional data, instead of just the device, (/dev/sdX), naming to go by.

From the GParted manual, see " Specifying Partition Label". There's other benefits that come from more advanced use of Volume Labels. Under " Intermediate Partition Actions", you see that when it comes to Deleting a Partition;

BTW, you can always set labels after you've formatted your partitions.

Good Luck..

 

If you're not sure what partition or drive you are looking at, run blkid to see partition labels and UUIDs, hdparm -i /dev/sdX to see drive model info, and obviously fdisk -l to list the partitions on each disk. Between those you should be able to figure it out, unless the drives are exactly the same, partitioned the same, and unlabeled. You can also see what's mounted where with mount.

 

Don't pin that on Linux. If you dive too deep in any OS, you can cause damage, some recoverable, others irreparable.

 

First I tried using testdisk from the "Systemrescuecd" unfortunately it was unable to recover the ntfs (windows) partition. Instead I used "Hirens Boot CD" to boot into a mini live XP operating system from there I was able to use the "EASEUS" software. I probably could have recovered the entire partition using the EASEUS software, but I really just wanted to get a single folder that contained all my documents. My pictures and music were already backed up previously and I kind of needed a clean install anyway

 

I usually go by the size of the partition. Obviously doesn't work if you have multiple partitions of the same size, but otherwise it does the trick. Labels would also be a good idea.