TestDisk usage on a accidently formatted HD

Can anyone help me please? I'm trying to use TestDisk to recover a drive from an accidental format. I've loaded testdisk and have selected the disk and analysis. I tried using p to see the files but nothing is showing up. I ran a deep scan and it came back with another partition that was bootable but this wasn't a boot drive it was a data drive. I don't know where to go from here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

J
edit: or is there another way to restore before the format to keep the file names, directories / folders, file structure the way it was?

 

First off stop writing to it and take it out and attached it to another computer with format recovery software. If you can't do this then you need to take it to a computer shop for them to do a unformat recovery to restore the drive. These are you only two options that you can do if you want to restore the drive otherwise there is nothing else to be done.

 

I did remove it and it is attached to a computer that I can load recovery software but I don't know which software to use to unformat it.

 

This has never failed me to unformat accidentally formatted disks: Active@ Partition Recovery

It works provided you didn't reformat that disk and write data to it. It simply restores it back to the way it was before you accidentally formatted it.

 

ok thank you, i'll give this a try.

J

 

The software are paid software that you install on another computer no the one your trying to recovery so if you did this then all attempts will be in vain. Only one I tried using so far is paid software those free will no unformat or recovery. Only ones I tried is KillDisk Undelete that is the only one I used so far but that isn't free if you want to use more of it's functions.