Once upon a happier time, it so happened that a friend of mine (I swear it was a friend – in no way did this happen to me because clearly, I have never been that much of a newbie) for whom “kernel” was still that hard bit on the inside of your popcorn, tried installing Ubuntu on a partition in a drive which already had Windows installed on a different partition.




It was his first time trying to install an OS by himself;

Instead of installing in the partition, he ended up by picking the option to install the OS in the entire drive, which would reformat the whole thing and create its own partitions.

Uh, whoops!!

The mistake noticed halfway through installation, so, he forcefully shutdown the PC, by cutting the power supply and then reboot the computer

Which confirmed the worst-case scenario: The drive’s data was gone, completely formatted over.

While that serves as a worthy parable about the pitfalls of unprepared OS installation;

Something like this scenario can happen to anyone. It may even be that you formatted a drive thinking, that you had all the data backed up and then later, it turned out that you hadn’t (to a friend that happened too).

Regardless of how it came to pass, but all isn’t lost in such a situation.

Just like deleted data is recoverable, so too is from the formatted drives. The area on the disk that retains the data files is marked as available and retains the old data until it’s overwritten by any other file.

As with deleted data that you want to recover, it is important;

Make sure you do remember not to copy new files into the drive, as this will overwrite the files that you want to recover.




Once again, it is also recommended that you install the data recovery software in a separate drive and set aside a new folder to recover the data to.

So, now there are two recovery methods to choose from, but it’s all depending upon on your condition.

Condition One: it’s like you accidentally formatted your external drive, or maybe your own computer’s local drive but still you can see the blank space.

Condition Two: Just like my friend, if you also formatted or drive or disk while installing the windows or something, and now you can’t be able to open your computer.

So, if you having the Condition Number 1 on your side, then that’s great because it means that you’ll need to run the recovery process from within the operating system just like a normal program.

Which is actually pretty easy;

And you can check out about those recovery steps with the help of my this suggested article >> All About Data Recovery And How To do It?

Because in this current article, I have written only about the recovery process what you’ll need to do when you having the Condition Number 2 situation on your side.

So, where were we?

#Let’s See, How To Recover Data When You Accidentally Formatted Your Drive While OS Installation:

In this case, the things do get a little bit more complicated, but it’s still doable, don’t worry.

The problem here is that this will mean it was your system drive whose contents disappeared, and without the OS, you can’t operate your computer.

In fact, it won’t even boot up.

In this case, you will need to use what is known as a Bootable Data Recovery Software, which can run by itself and does not require an OS to get in operating.

Bootable Recovery Programs can run from an external source – like a DVD or a USB drive by Connecting it to your PC, they can “see” into your system to find out what went wrong where and how to put the files back.

And you know, this is best done if you run the recovery on the entire hard disk instead of just a partition (lettered drive). This will allow the program to search the entire hard disk as a single block of data and ignore the partitions, giving you a better chance to pull that particular rabbit out the proverbial hat.

This does not delete your existing partitions or even get rid of any non-deleted files that exist in the disk, which is just that small extra bonus silver lining.

And there is one more thing that scanning the big whole disk like 500Gigs may take time, which also depending on how powerful your PC is and the number of files the program is looking for. It is not unusual to take a couple of hours, so be patient.

Once the scan is finished, the final step is easy – simply locate the missing files and get them recovered to a specified destination folder.

And to do all of that, first, you’ll need a bootable data recovery software your computer or laptop.

And you know, Every working data recovery softwares are only available in the paid version;

And in case, if you try to use some other 3rd party free data recovery tool to recover your data, then it’s also quite possible that data recovery tool will overwrite some of the storage blocks, which can cause the lower chances of recovering estimated data.

And Just like every time, I know!

At the end, you’ll always need a professional to back things back to normal. So, why don’t use it at the first place;

And, if need you my opinion;

I can recommend you a best in class software which can help for this kind of a situation, and that software’s name is “EaseUS Data Recovery Bootable Media 11.0”.

The EaseUS Bootable Media is designed specifically for data loss from system crash OS trouble or booting problems. The big plus here, obviously, is that you don’t need to run it from inside your hard drive, allowing you search anything and everything without obstacles.

And here’s the link if you are planning to buy that software (EaseUS Data Recovery Bootable Media 11.00 –Cart Link):

For Example: let’s See How to Use EaseUS Bootable Media

This requires you to create a WinPE bootable disk beforehand, which isn’t that hard too.

WinPE stands for Window Pre-installation Environment, and it is a windows system that provides the minimum required functions based on OS kernels.

To create a bootable disk from the EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard WinPE Edition, you will need a working computer, to install the main software and with the help of that main software, you’ll able to make any of your USB pen drive or CD/DVD, ready for the data recovery process.

To do that;

Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard WinPE Edition.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard WinPE Edition will recognize your CD/DVD device or USB drive automatically. Or you can also export then ISO file manually.

Select CD/DVD or USB drive and click “Proceed” to create a bootable disk or drive.

Running the EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard from WinPE bootable disk

Then the first thing you will need to do is change the computer’s boot sequence or use the boot menu, just to boot the bootable device

For that you can check out this another article >> How to Quick Boot A USB or CD/DVD Directly From the Boot Menu?

And this is how you’ll screen will look like after booting the EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard from WinPE bootable disk.

Pick the “sick” drive that you want to recover data from, and be ready for a long wait. Go get some popcorn (if that reminds you of kernels again, get some Cheetos instead, just for the love of all that is holy, do not spill crumbs over the PC desk) and maybe read a book.

Once the scan is done, select the files you need and get them recovered.

And depending on the file size, this may also take a long while (Jumbo bag. Cheetos, jumbo bag, yes) and be sure to verify your files are uncorrupted and whole again after it is done.



1 COMMENT

  1. Very informative Data Recovery Post Madhur..!! and off course all above Mentioned steps very useful actionable advice actually…!!

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