[SOLVED] I accidentally mkfs.ext4'd my Windows partition

moisespedro · 04-10-2014, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7

Chances are because you used mkfs.ext4 and stopped it that you might not be able to restore the Windows Partition outright but there are some options...

Download a copy of Hiren's Boot Disk http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd and try using the Recuva utility (as well as other Recovery Tools) and see if you can Recover any lost data and save it to another hard disk.

By the way, if I let the format process complete would I have better chances?

rknichols · 04-10-2014, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by moisespedro

By the way, if I let the format process complete would I have better chances?

No. The process was initializing inode blocks and free space maps. Every sector that it wrote was overwriting part of the data you wanted to recover. Letting it continue would just corrupt more files.

SavoTU · 04-11-2014, 06:10 AM

Once you have a copy of all the data safe i would try running a partition recovery program. I had picked up a computer from the local tip (needed a new case and it was just sat there) when i got home realized it was a hole working pc with just a bios setting wrong, so formatted installed Slackware and ran it for a while.

A while later i decided to run a partition recovery program on it to see what was left, it managed to restore me to a working Windows XP install all software working (that i tested) and about 2.2gb of emails.