How To Recover Formatted Partition in Windows 11/10/8/7?

Quick Navigation:

• Overview on recovering formatted partition
• Format recovery software
• Method #1: Recover formatted partition with free partition recovery software
• Method #2: Recover formatted partition via advanced tool
• Method #3: Recover RAW/unformatted partition
• Conclusion

Overview on recovering formatted partition

Partition formatting refers to the process of creating a file system on the drive so that files can be stored and accessed by system. Partition or volume on hard drive or other storage devices like SD card, USB stick or SSD should be formatted to a certain type of file system so that it can be recognized by operating system. The formatting practice is one the of frequently used methods to quickly remove data off a device. Thus, formatting or reformatting of disk or partition should be performed carefully, for example data on the partition should be backed up in advance. If you do not have any backup copy of formatted partition, you'll have to unformat partition and recover data. Partition formatting is useful and important function and users carry it out for various reasons:

Why disk partition gets formatted?

• Many users format important volume/partition by accident on disk when they attempt to format another drive.
• Formatting hard disk partition helps to quickly delete all data on the drive, and thus disk space can be freed up for new data.
• Cannot access the drive and receive error message like "You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it". Then you click Yes and format the drive without much knowledge whether to format it.
• The entire disk gets formatted during disk partitioning or system installation.
• You want to change file system type, such as format disk to EXT4 from NTFS, change NTFS to exFAT, etc.
• The disk infects virus or malware and formatting is a good option to get rid of risks posed by virus.
• Disk contains bad sectors and some users want to run a surface scanning on the drive.

For whatever reasons, files in the partition has been gone after formatting. Apart from formatting, there are many other situations that storage device faces sever data loss issue. Is that possible to retrieve files from formatted drive? In general, we can get back formatted files with the help of format recovery software.

Why is formatted data recovery available?

It has been proved that there are good chances that you can recover lost files and folders from formatted partition or disk. You may wonder why formatted data is still recoverable. Put is briefly, when a partition gets formatted, only file entries on the root directory and file allocation table are removed and all file data is not wiped from the drive. Since entries for those files have been removed, operating system cannot access corresponding data and then marks sectors taken by formatted data as free. Lost files can be recovered as long as they are not damaged or overwritten by any writing actions. Thus, if you want to complete wipe hard drive, simple formatting is not enough.

Suggestions to achieve successful format recovery

Formatted partition recovery is possible though, you need to pay attention to following points so as to maximize recovery result.

• Stop writing any data to the partition: formatted files stay on the partition and they are stored on somewhere of the volume even though they are invisible. If you save data to the partition after formatting, there is possibility to overwrite recoverable data. Hence, stop using the partition and close programs that may access the drive.
• Do not reformat the partition: Since formatting process creates new file system on the volume, it is not a wise move to format partition again if you want to recover lost data. Though, writing action is not that much, it is not recommended to do so.
• Do not run disk check on the formatted partition: Disk check function provided by operating system can check and repair partition errors, but in many cases, it may repair excessively and damage information which is crucial to successful partition recovery.
• Try trusted recovery software: Do not try any cracked recovery software which may contains virus and destroys recoverable data. You should download software from trusted website. The basic criterion is that it should be clean, read-only and reliable.

Format recovery software free download

Format recovery software is designed for restoring lost data from formatted partition or drive. You can easily find lots of partition recovery programs on the Internet, and we'd like to recommend DiskGenius and Eassos Recovery to recover formatted partition or disk.

DiskGenius is full-featured data recovery tool. It is developed with the unique data recovery algorithm and it is efficient to recover files from formatted NTFS, exFAT, FAT12/16/32 and EXT2/EXT3/EXT4 partitions. It works well on RAW partition recovery, file recovery and lost partition recovery.

• Retrieve lost files from formatted or RAW partition.
• Search for lost/deleted partitions and restore them to working status.
• Quick scan & complete scan: detect recoverable files from formatted, deleted, damaged partitions.
• A feature-rich hexadecimal editor is provided for advanced recovery.
• Provide the function to create image for disk, partition or sector segments so that you can recover data from image without affecting original disk.
• Various storage devices are supported: IDE, SATA, eSATA, SSD, SCSI, RAID, USB flash drive, memory card, virtual disk, etc.

Eassos Recovery Free is a simple file recovery and partition recovery application. It is designed with a recovery wizard which guides through the recovery process step by step. Hence, users can complete format recovery task via simple steps. The free edition is able to recover 1GB data free of charge. If you want to recover more data, you can upgrade to the full edition.

• Four recovery options are provided, which enables users to deal with most data loss issues.
• File recovery: recover deleted files, recover formatted data, and restore lost data from damaged disk.
• Partition recovery: recover deleted/lost partitions, retrieve lost data from formatted or inaccessible partition.
• File preview: files can be previewed in scanning result and you can make sure whether files are recoverable.
• Supported file system: NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, FAT16, FAT12.
• Supported devices: hard drive, external hard drive, USB flash disk, SD card, pen drive, etc.

Method #1: Recover formatted partition with free partition recovery software

Download and install Eassos Recovery Free on your computer and you can follow steps below to recover formatted data. Note: do not install the partition recovery software to the formatted drive.

Step 1. Launch Eassos Recovery Free from your computer and choose recovery mode from the main interface.

To recover formatted partition from hard drive, you can select "Recover Files From Partition". This option can also be used to recover RAW drive, unformatted volume or corrupted partition. If you want to recover formatted USB disk, you can also try "Recover Files From Disk".

Step 2. Select the formatted partition and click Next button to start scanning process.

Partitions are listed in this page and you should choose the partition where lost files were stored. The wait for the software to run scanning and find out recoverable data.

Step 3. Preview and recover files.

The program shows recoverable files when scanning is ongoing and you can preview retrievable files. You can open and view file before copying them to a different drive.

Tick checkboxes for files and folders and click Recover button to save them to a different location. After files are copied you can open destination location to check recovered data.

Method #2: Recover formatted partition via advanced tool

If formatted files cannot be recovered via the first method, you can try the guide in this section. DiskGenius supports recovering files from formatted NTFS, exFAT, FAT12/16/32 and EXT4/EXT3/EXT2 partitions. If you haven't downloaded DiskGenius on your computer, you can go to the download page to get the trial edition. One thing should be noted that do not save the installer or install the program to the formatted partition.

Step 1. Launch DiskGenius, right-click on the formatted partition and choose Recover Lost Files as below:

To open Recover Files windows, you can also click File Recovery button from toolbar after selecting formatted volume. In this example, we use DiskGenius to recover lost files from formatted EXT4 partition:

Step 2. Select recovery option Complete Recovery and click Start button, and DiskGenius begins to search for lost files.

Recover Deleted Files: this option performs quick scanning from MFT and free disk space, and it recovers deleted files only.

Complete Recovery: Runs a deep and complete scanning on selected disk area and it is able to found more files. If file directory of lost data is not damage, it'll list files with original names during or after scanning.

Search For Known File Types: Searches for lost data by file type and it is the ultimate solution when lost files gets partly overwritten or directory gets damaged. You can click "Select File Types" button to specify file types you want to recover.

Advanced Options: Click "Advanced Options" button and you can choose file system type for the formatted partition.

Step 3. Preview recoverable files in scanning result.

Files and folders displayed in scanning result are what you can recover. How to make sure they are correct or damaged? File preview can help you find the answer. Photos, video, audio, text, documents (.doc, .docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, etc.) can be opened in the preview window, shown as below. If DiskGenius prompts the file is damaged, it cannot be opened after recovery.

Step 4. Copy and save files you want to recover.

Select files and folders you want to restore in the scanning result, right-click on selected data and choose Copy To. Then a window will pop up and you can set a location to save recovered data.

Method #3: Recover RAW/unformatted partition

It happens that a partition becomes unformatted or RAW format, for example, the partition cannot be opened in File Explorer and reports error message like "F: is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" or "You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it". Some users may format the drive without the knowledge that formatting removes data on the drive. If the unformatted partition contains important files, you need to perform partition recovery prior to formatting. How to recover unformatted / RAW partition?

Step 1. Install and launch DiskGenius and locate the unformatted partition in the software. Then check if files in the partition can be displayed directly, if not, then move to step 2.

Step 2. Select and right-click the unformatted partition in DiskGenius, and choose Load Current Partition Intelligently.

In many cases, this function is able to load files and folders in the damaged NTFS partition. Then you can preview and recover files to specified location. If this function does not work, then move to step 3.

Step 3. Click on the unformatted partition and choose File Recovery, as follows.

Step 4. Select recovery options and click Start button. Then DiskGenius stats to search for lost files from select partition.

Step 5   Recover data: select files to be recovered, right-click on them and choose Copy To.

After DiskGenius lists all files you want to recover, you can stop scanning and copy desired data to specified location.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you've learned how to recover formatted partition and how to unformat partition via free and advanced format partition recovery software. To achieve successful recovery of lost data, you should protect formatted partition against data overwriting actions. If you have any questions concerning partition recovery or file recovery, please do not hesitate to contact our team of experts.