Make sure you format the right HDD

I made a terrible mistake when I want to format my damn HDD on Monday night.

Seriously speaking, I have no idea why I want to do it swiftly so I just went on formatting my C drive.

This is a little tricky.

Previously, I have new HDD of 500GB for my C drive but according to William, it will not take up full capacity at all, hence I think I used partition magic to make it 300GB and 200GB partition for my HDD. So during formatting time, I think system went a little crazy!

Since I am facing problem for my explorer task bar and I also felt that certain programs are not running well, I decided to format it off.

I know I should back up my photos drive folders and files to my external HDD, but I didn't.
I know I should plug out the cables from the remaining HDD which is NOT C drive, but I didn't.

These are the 2 big mistake I made.

I have no idea why it format E drive when I hit C drive initially. But strangely, I do not know why I never off the entire computer to prevent it from carrying on. I just let it continue the job.

When it had been formatted, it went to the same screen again! I saw that there's 3rd option for me to choose! Remain intact etc...

I reboot to check my C drive! No Window show up at all.

I carry on formatting my C drive. I forgotten what happen afterward.

When I boot up after it had installed Window, I found that my 3 HDDs became 128GB! My music and photos drive were gone!

My ex army mate recommended me to go to ADRC to retrieve my data back but the pricing is way too expensive. Even William also thumbs up to this company too.

I pleaded William to drop by my house yesterday and offer to treat him dinner, fetch him from workplace and back home. Thank godness he is able to. But I apologize for spending his 3hr in my hse.

He used Hiren Boot CD v9.9 to check my data and I am able to find my all my music folders, but not my photos! So he used one of the program in it: {GetDataBack}, to retrieve it.

Before retrieving, it will take up 2hrs to scan it through first.

After scanning, it will prompt you where to place the files. I am lucky enough to have my 3rd 1TB HDD which is meant for movies tho. I deleted my  entire movies in order to allow the recovered files to be copied in.

Thought I am able to get all the files back when I woke up this morning,  but it hit 7% only because  Window pop out to ask certain question if I should continue. Look like it had been paused for 6hrs.

I am going to retrieve 2 times. 1st time with deleted files and 2nd without it.

From the Window I saw yesterday, I found all my previous project that I done before! These folders are at the root of the drive previously, luckily it did not rename the folder name. Everything are intact.

But I have folders that I cannot find at all because of the change of name. They are misc photos from 2006-present but they are stored in another folder under root directory. One of the folders which had been renamed to numbers include my daughter first month photo!

I did not spectifically check all the folders because there are too many! (I just skip to check randomly) The folders did show quite a bit of images in it, same as my deleted files too.

Hoping ALL images will be able to retrieve back.

Next time Im going to make sure all HDD cable taken out when doing formatting! My OS drive is gonna be just 50Gb!

When my mom and wifey heard about the situation, both of them really feel so sad about it. But luckily I always made an effort to upload to flickr and youtube!

Im going to do backup every week!

I am traumatised for this incident!

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