Accidentally formatted my laptop Hdd, Need help

murt1987

Hi guys, I did something really stupid just now. I was trying to format an external Toshiba hard drive and change it from nfts to fat32. It was completely empty so it should have taken a second. But what I didn't realise that my internal hdd was a Toshiba hdd too. That was the one I was trying to format on my dell laptop.

My laptop crashed and now when I turn it on it says " no bootable device found" with only the option is To do a pre boot system assessment or retry the boot.

So I have two issues:

How do I even boot up window 7 and how is there a way to recover the files I have on it. I have assignment a to hand up this week and it was my intent to back them up onto this new hdd and now I go and do this.

Please please tell me someone knows how to fix this. Today's already been a bad enough day as it is.

Merl1n

you need another computer to run a recovery on the hard drive
if you try reinstall windows this drive you reduce your chance of getting files back
partition recovery software is what you need

murt1987

Merl1n wrote: »

you need another computer to run a recovery on the hard drive
if you try reinstall windows this drive you reduce your chance of getting files back
partition recovery software is what you need

Thanks for the reply.

Is running a recovery on the hard drive as simple as just removing my hard drive from my laptop, removing the hard drive from another laptop or desktop and putting my formatted hdd into that computer. Im not much of a tech guy but I imagine when you boot the computer with my hdd it should give u the option of recovery?

Thanks again

Merl1n

you need to load recovery software on a new laptop not sure if you can get free partition recovery software or if you will have to buy it
Then get a caddy for the formatted hard drive and connect it to the computer using usb

murt1987

Merl1n wrote: »

you need to load recovery software on a new laptop not sure if you can get free partition recovery software or if you will have to buy it
Then get a caddy for the formatted hard drive and connect it to the computer using usb

Merl1n wrote: »

you need to load recovery software on a new laptop not sure if you can get free partition recovery software or if you will have to buy it
Then get a caddy for the formatted hard drive and connect it to the computer using usb

You mean a 2.5 SATA USB enclosure. I can't post a pic if one but I'd imagine PC world would sell them.Then run the recovery software with it like an external hdd?

ED E

murt1987 wrote: »

You mean a 2.5 SATA USB enclosure. I can't post a pic if one but I'd imagine PC world would sell them.Then run the recovery software with it like an external hdd?

Yep, exactly that. Photorec or Recuva should pull most stuff off of it as youve likely only done a quick format so only the file table is gone, not the data(or at least most of it).

Dont do anything until you know what you're attempting, any messing around will just worsen your chances.

CountyHurler

GetDataBack is excellent. But it costs a few quid... Saved a few of my clients in the past.