Data Recovery (formatted NTSC drive)

[XDelusion]

Not sure where to post this, so I'm posting here:

 A while ago I was going to format a USB stick with the HP Format Tool, and chose the wrong drive (a 4Tb drive will ALL my musick, apps, games, vintage, etc. on it from over 20 years of collecting).

 The Tool said the drive was in use and it could not be formatted. "Pheewwwww" I thought, as I realized what I had done.

 Well regardless of what it said, it formatted it, as it is no longer readable by any OS, so I ran the Easus Data Recovery sofware on it before doing ANYTHING else to it. It took about a week, but it recovered the drive to another 4Tb which I was forced to order. The space used ended up about the same, but....wtf...

...folders are missing the entire contents, folders which I accessed the most like my Applications folder for restoring and setting computers after a fresh install. All my work tools, Amiga programs, MP3's/Flac's etc.
 Everything MOST important, MISSING.

 Why would this be? And if it is missing, then why does the hard drive reflect that that space is still used?

 THere are lost folders and files in root, but I'm not seeing the stuff I"m looking for. This is odd and I'm wondering if I should not use Easus and use something else instead?

[XDelusion]

It was a quick format, and the drive had only been formatted to NTSC one time since I first bought it.

 Will test PhotoRec as well as the free TestDisk which I am reaing is supposed to be exceptional
 If both fail, I will then try Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery which is also rumoured to be exceptional somehow.

[XDelusion]

I think he means NTFS, not NTSC.  I was confused at first too.

No no, I meant PAL.

[XDelusion]

I would second the suggestion of trying Recuva.  It's a dumb name, but it's free, and has had very good results for me in recovering damaged partitions.

A 4tb drive can be running into a lot of issues, regardless, though.  Certain controllers and NTFS block sizes can cause serious chaos.  Make sure your controller and OS support partitions of the size you're working with.  

Make sure you don't write anything to the original drive, and double and triple check your steps.  There is a lot of peril there.

If you totally fail, there's always OnTrack.  You'll have to send the drives to them.  And they cost some money.  But they're like dark magicians at data recovery.  They can do unholy things.

Unholy things you say? Well if worse comes to worse, I may just goto them.

[XDelusion]

I've had pretty good luck with Recuva.  For actual drive integrity problems and drive maintenance, I swear by Spinrite.

Spinrite added to my list of programs to try. I might as well make a comparison while I'm at it, unless of course during my testing I just find one that is PERFECT, then I'll quit and declair a king.

[XDelusion]

I've only used spinrite on hard drives, never a usb stick. Not sure it works on those.  It's commercial and made to recover from data loss due to physical problems like bad sectors, not so much undeleting or unformatting. I agree though, it is one of the best at what is does. If spinrite can't recover your data from a bad drive, I think the only option left is to ship your hardware to a place like ontrack.

Plaz

First off, this is an external 4Tb USB drive, not just a USB Memory Stick. Secondly, it sounds like because of the size of my drive that Spinrite may not be able to work with it, and I didn't see anything about RAW support, as this drive never successfully re-formatted.

Again though, if all else fails, I'll at least give it a try.

[XDelusion]

Well, I got tired of my slow laptop, and since installed a SSD in my fastest machine, so I stopped verything, migrated to the other machine and to USB3, finished the job in less than a day and GetDataBack seems to be the golden application. It found EVERYTHING and put it where it should all be.

 I'd still like to take a stab at the free command line programs before I format the drive, just to see how well it does considering it is free.

 Thanks all!