Guys, ...was not paying attention and made a mistake. Darn. I accidently quick-formatted the wrong USB pendrive (...got serveral identical) I urgently need a good 'unformat tool', hopefully able to resque the deleted contents. Any suggestions or idea's? Thanks in advance.
@Tito, thanks, appreciate it! ...dl PhotoRec; Program is running. It is going to take some time. Will report back when finished. /edit/ Ok PhotoRec finally finished; Unfortunately there was a lot of data stored on this pendrive. Now I have to face reality and in the next couple of days shift through 1000's of files. - Most of the files are renamed to a number + ext. only. Without checking them manually there's really no telling what the contents are. I already noticed PhotoRec was unable to restore all files as I'm missing loads of pictures. Not really looking forward to the task ahead. Having said that, I'm happy with the results sofar, it could have been much worse. Will keep the pendrive 'as-is' for now. Hoping there are other tools out there which are able to restore more. Guess the chances are slim. Tito thanks again bud, I owe you a couple of drinks!
Thanks for your reply and suggestion Stannieman; Appreciate it! Will do, nothing to lose, everything to gain. Will post the results when ready.
@EFA11 ...yes mate, i am aware of what the format /q command does. It wipes only the filetable, the actual files are still there. That is why I was comfortable with- and did try PhotoRec (Tito's suggestion) as PhotoRec doesn't perform any write actions on the USB pendrive. It only reads data, writes recovered data to a user specific directory (any drive). Unfortunately the results were as described in previous. In all these year such stupidity never *ever* happend to me Not paying attention, carelessness, dunno. With identical USB pendrives a mistake is easely made. ...I really don't want to risk loss of data but I will try this as I just can't afford to spend days on checking and renaming 1000s of recovered files. Course I've made backups (daily) but these are far from complete as on any given day there are 100s of files wiped, created, edited etc. I learned a valuable lesson. From what I read Recuva seems to be very good (Stannieman already mentioned it) I have to read-up on how this tool actually recovers data. - If it doesn't work I'm more then prepared to give EaseUS a go. Thanks for your input bud, appreciate it!
I've always found R-Studio to be very good (Surprised it's not on that list). As with most, it does not write to the drive but copies from it...
Thanks Flipp3r, appreciate your input! As described in my reply to EFA11 if Recuva fails I have to look at other options. As I don't want to take any chances and minimize the risk of loss of data. I have to read up on how these individual tools actually work. Never heard of R-Studio before but its reassuring to learn the tool doesnt write to the USB pendrive. I will certainly take it into consideration. Thanks!
if u use recuva, u need to restore the folder structure so it will not overwrite if u made a same name for file but different content, most of restoration data check the mft (master file table), I'm not sure format with quick option have also delete the mft too. edit: try by myself with quick format option with a 2GB pendrive, almost all image file restored with recuva but u need to restore that into different path instead the pendrive itself (an example try to use ur harddrive).
Thanks for your input ar_seven_am, appreciate it. Yes, a quick format wipes the file table. Luckely I noticed my mistake immediately. Theoretically speaking there is a good chance of recovering data. Unfortunately it's not that simple. ...we're not talking about a 2 GB pendrive either. Considering the situation ...suffice to say, nobody in their right mind would willingly write data TO that pendrive.
Thanks bud, appreciate your input. Had a quick peek at those links you gave. Don't be, best keep it that way. ... sound advice, noted for future references.
Update First of all - thanks again to everyone for your input and suggestions. After a lot, and I mean A LOT, of testing I found R-Studio Data Recovery and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro to be the most useful programs. (best results) Glad I don't do a full format per default when re-using pendrives, lol. I managed to recover almost all data - downside, in the process I recovered a lot of older obsolete data as well. Unfortunately I still had to check every file (80%+ encrypted) for corruption and relevance. It took a considerable amount of time but I'm glad to say; 'sorted, job done!'