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So I was in the process of creating a ubuntu live USB with the start up disc creator on my Ubuntu 14.04 computer. I meant to format the USB stick that was in my computer but accidentally selected my 256GB External Hard Drive that used to contain every single thing I have ever done on a computer since middle school. 12 years of data gone.

I immediately ejected the drive and have not touched it since. I know that when you delete a file that generally it does not actually get deleted but is made available to be over ridden.

Is it possible for me to unformat my drive?

Andrew Pullins
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2 Answers2

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Yes, you should be able to retrieve the filesystem as long as you don't continue to write to it. The more stuff you write, the less chance you have of getting your filesystem back, because you'll start overwriting stuff.

You can use the Testdisk software do do these things, but if you've never done it before, you might possibly want to make a backup of your disk before doing so, just to make sure you don't make it worse.

The thing to keep in mind here is to keep calm, don't give up and read the manuals properly. There's very good chances you'll be able to retrieve everything perfectly if you take proper care. Also, if the filesystem turns out to be too damaged to retrieve, you should be able to get all your files back although this might be quite a lot of work. (Without the filesystem, you don't have filenames or directories, but only the file content).

Jo-Erlend Schinstad
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I had a HDD fail on me a few months back and my advice is to clone the drive to back it up before you start with recovery tools, rather than just copying it. Copying will only copy files that are visible and indexed by the file system, whereas cloning will literally copy every sector of data on the drive, including lost/deleted files and 'junk'. I believe there are free/open-source cloning tools available - do a Google search for 'Hiren's Boot Disk', I think that includes one or two.

Time4Tea
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