1) Instead of clicking on down arrow in scrollbar I accidentally clicked on "Format" button in Kubuntu's startup disk creator - for your amusement I am not the only one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...or/+bug/446891

2) It got 5 seconds to do bad things to my 500GB NTFS external Western Digital hard drive before I realized to pull the USB plug.

3) Now it appears in Windows XP as "RAW" - neither as FAT or NTFS

4) I tried NTFS Mechanic in Windows Xp that in the end was useless waste of time.

5) Next I ran TestDisk, but that didn't see NTFS partition, only two strange (Identical?) FAT32 partitions. I changed to NTFS type, it couldn't list files, then I tried fixing MBR, but that didn't help either.

This is what TestDisk sees now:
http://i.imgur.com/H0nP3.png
http://i.imgur.com/OHOtL.png

After "Quick Search" and answering "Yes" to "Vista question" (though I think that this disk was formatted as NTFS under Windows7) it sees NTFS:
http://i.imgur.com/P4hPx.png

However "List Files with P" shows nothing and instead I get "No file found, filesystem seems damaged.":
http://i.imgur.com/yqGzw.png

Attempting "Deeper Search":
http://i.imgur.com/t7DfT.png
http://i.imgur.com/nhvwr.png

Still nothing then choosing list files:
http://i.imgur.com/QzhGR.png

I choose not to write because no files were seen:
http://i.imgur.com/Qbj2P.png


And while reading this tutorial:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_...tted_partition

Trying advanced features:
http://i.imgur.com/DwvYX.png

Repair MFT:
http://i.imgur.com/Ep9CX.png

Rebuild BS (which I think I did before and wrote the changes to hard drive - was that my mistake???):
http://i.imgur.com/yPjSK.png
List shows no files so I give up

So I am thinking of reformatting it to NTFS in Windows XP and run TestDisk one more time or would that be really really idiotic action to take? And one question about Photorec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec - can it find encrypted folders I created with Ubuntu?

This whole thing seems really strange to me, cause I don't think that Kubuntu's startup disk even had the time to reformat NTFS to FAT. Why do all Windows software specifically designed to repair NTFS fail consistently? So far I tried GetDataBack for NTFS, DiskInternals NTFS Recovery, Recuva (<-- this performed surprisingly well on my test thumb drive there it could see eight mp3 files I put on NTFS before reformatting it to FAT, others didn't show correct names) and NTFS Mechanic. Got any better suggestions?

Welcome to LQ hjklo

Now, err....I dont think you wanna format it if you wanna recover data
be patient and dont freak out

How did you run testdisk?
from a livecd or what?

if you boot up a Linux livecd/usb (ubuntu,debian,etc)
and open file manager can you mount drive?

if you open up Gparted, what does Gparted see drive as?
Unallocated?

so, please answer those questions and dont do anything more to drive till Memebers here chime in

First I tried all the stuff recommended here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery
except imaging with ddrescue because I do not have free space more than 500GB anywhere right now

Now I am on Windows and have tried so far a few NTFS recovery programs, at the moment running "Quick Recovery":
http://i.imgur.com/W3Ldw.png

I figured since I couldn't repair NTFS partition I might as well start slow scanning and see if I can at least restore something. Scanning shouldn't make anything worse.

Try to search in google free program with name undelete(FREE!! not trial or paid).
THIS IS IMORTANT!! if you value your data really make backup of disk(there was tool named norton ghost it can compress image data so if you had a lot of free space image could be smaller), but dd is better.
As i see program possibly overwrite data table(where data location&description reside) if im correct about tool name testdisk in past provide me with good results as it can detect files by header signatures without data description,still you may have good chances detect original/secondary ntfs partition data by other recovery tools.

Ok. I take everything negative back I said about GetDataBack for NTFS. I recovered my encrypted folder, music, documents, pictures and a few movies. Only one video and useless old copies of programs I never used were lost!

http://i.imgur.com/2VdaG.png