Hi all,

Last night I had an unrecoverable failure of my laptop hard drive. So I downloaded the W10 boot disk software from the Microsoft website and used a 1t bite external HD which I had many FlightSim backup files. I fixed the laptop but I didn't realize the boot disk software would possible reformat the whole external HD.

Can someone tell me for sure if this is what happened and if not how to recover any FS data that is hopefully still on the drive.

When I click on the hard drive using explorer I see only the boot disk data. (it appears to have partitioned 32GB and left 899.51GB unallocated)

 

thanks

Ice

I'd say your files have been wiped, although you should have gotten a warning that any data would be wiped before you proceeded. You could try and partition the non allocated space and assign a drive letter and read the drive through explorer, but realistically any files would have been wiped when the partition was created. There are people around who specialize in recovering lost files and some software is available, either way, it's going to cost money. Before spending any money, do a Youtube search for any videos available that might help.

Sorry for  no positive help.

steve

Thanks Steve

 

 

Ice

Ice you could  buy some data recovery software  I once wiped/  reformatted my Brother in laws PC when  fixing a virus for him.  He then told me he had some family photos on it and they were not backed up. !!!

 

I used this company's software,  downloaded the trial version to see if it would find anything , and as soon as it recovered  a few phots I purchased the package.  its not cheap  but since then  its paid for itself many times over!

 

https://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizardpro/

 

 

Great thanks Bozdog

 

 

 

Bummer. Though it might be possible to recover a number of your FS files.

The good news is that the Windows you downloaded does not have all the extra stuff your original OS had. Once you sign in with your MS account, it will activate itself (with a key registered to your account), and you should be good to go. I just did this. I put the download on a flash drive all by itself so I can use it again.