Cancelled reformat...

Hello, my name is Will

I have a problem with my pc. I planed to reinstall the system due to bugs from some pre installed software. Since I do not have an external drive, I made a partition and placed all the files I wish to backup(I usually do this whenever I reinstall). Unfortunately I did not pay close attention to the format options (it was set to "clear whole drive and partitions" by default, it should have been "clear main drive and leave partitions" ). After the ten second timer it started to format the drive with "clear whole drive and partitions" option. I got shocked and there was no cancel button. So i had to shut it down forcefully. I booted up "mini xp" from a cd (since i could not access windows normaly due to some bugs. I looked at the hard drive list and drive C and F(my partition with the backups) is GONE! I looked up "Partition wizard" and there was a huge amount of unallocated space!(the total capacity of drive C and F)!

Now I feel so bad because I could have canceled it when the countdown timer appeared. I'm already tired of searching the right software to recover data from the unallocated space. I should have just spend some money for an external disk for backups even if it is not going to be used very often. I know it was my own fault and, I did not pay close attention to those settings. But is there anyway to recover that data? If there really is no way... I guess I could leave it. It's just that I have lots of saved projects, photos, music, and memories. I will be waiting patiently for any solutions. I will try to search for solutions as well. Thank you!

Most of the data is probably still there, just no MBR for your OS to find it. You can try some recovery software, like those available on HIREN'S BOOT DISK and probably get some of the data back. There is a list of the programs on that disk HERE, look under the recovery tools.

Yes, you can hit the edit button, the left of the 3 and just change it to "never mind" or "solved."

I would try partition recovery, recuva, and data rescue dd first.