Formatted the external hard drive

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

I have My Book Essential WDBACW0020HBK-01.
My son mistakenly formatted the drive.

Is there a way that the data can be recovered?

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You can attempt data recovery via data recovery software

Years ago, as a test … i deliberately formatted a 1TB Hard drive with data on it (of course, i had a backup) to see if and how much data i could recover afterwards.

I managed to recover 99% of the data intact :slight_smile:

i used GetDataBack for NTFS at the time

But, a few things about the data recovery process

  1. After formatting the hard drive … you must stop using it immediately. ie. DO NOT write any data to it. If you do, then the chances of recovering you data will decrease.

  2. To perform data recovery … you need another Hard drive to recover the data too. ie. you can’t recovery the data to the same hard drive. So, in my test i used another 1TB HDD, you will have to use another 2TB HDD.

  3. Data recovery takes an extremely long time … from memory i think it took about 18 to 20 Hours to recover data from a 1TB HDD … a 2TB Hard drive will take probably a couple of Days.

Final Advice … also keep a back up of your data in case of accidental formatting, accidents (drops, falls) or hard drive malfunction.

Oh, if software data recovery does not work for you, there are professional data recovery services available …but they do not come cheap. Get a quote, and be sitting down when they give it to you.

1 Like
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Thank you very much.for your answer.
I think I am going to ask a professional to retrieve the data, as I don’t want to take any risk.

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Did you check if the data is still recoverable using a recovery tool or a service? Have you tried the BLR Hard drive data recovery software?

It’s quite easy to use and might help restore your formatted files!

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How did you format the external hard drive?

  1. Quick format
    A quick format only erases the file system’s index, making data seem gone but leaving it recoverable.

  2. Full format
    Full format will overwrite everything with zeros, check for bad sectors, and take much longer, making recovery almost impossible.

If you accidentally performed a quick format and did not write new data to the external hard drive, data recovery software has a good chance of recovery. Also read: 5 Ways to Recover Data from External Hard Drive on Mac