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I have made a big mistake - I accidently deleted the D partition and formatted it to NTFS.

  • Is there a way to recover my data?
  • Is this partition needed by the OS?
  • Can I live without it?
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  • First of all, STOP RIGHT NOW and make sure you do not write anything to where that partition was. Don't use the new partition at all, and avoid doing any writes elsewhere if you can. There are ways to at least mostly get your data back, but they depend on no writes taking place in the meantime. Any writes to that partition will lower your chances of getting your data back.
    – user
    Jan 25, 2015 at 13:28
  • Second, since you are asking this, I am going to presume that you have no recent, known good backup of the data in question? (If you do, the easiest would probably be to just restore that backup.)
    – user
    Jan 25, 2015 at 13:32

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TestDisk : Open Source solution.

Note that this, and all other solutions, are useless if this is not handled right. Do not write to the section of the disk you want to recover from. To be super-safe, it's best to start by making a full disk image of whatever disk held your D:. The best approach is doing is doing that before trying anything else, like running recovery software. Whether that is deemed easy enough, or important enough, may depend on your skills, resources (like extra disks), and just how important the data was.

When recovering files, try to save files to another portion of the disk (like the C:). Using a separate disk is not a bad idea at all. (I don't know if your C: and D: are on separate hardware, or not.)

Worst case scenario: If the data is overwritten, it may still be able to be "peeled" back to look at an earlier version of the data. That may be something that you can't just do with simple software. You might want to check into commercial recovery services if you really lost something of true importance, and have money to spend. Although, some commercial options might not do anything more than running Undelete-style software. The more expensive ones may cost thousands of dollars for the attempt, which is usually beyond the price range of people who weren't backing up the data in the first place. I mention it anyway because I didn't want to make baseless assumptions. I've never used such a service myself, but I've been in the IT industry and I have heard that they work.

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Do not write anything else on D: until you recover it!!!

Short answer ;)

  • yes
  • no
  • yes

In case of Windows your OS is installed on C: . Even if you have two windows on same machine each one will be one C: and see other one on D: or some other drive. So your OS is fine, but you can install some programs on other partitions for example D:

There are planty of tools for recovering data. You should try Recuva (enable deep scan). https://www.piriform.com/recuva it is free GUI tool. If you just did quick format everytihg is still there!

And see if you can recover your data, chanches you will, but you will need third partition or HDD or USB device to recover your data, then to write them back on D: drive if you want. Because if you try to recover them and write them to D: chances are you will overwrite some other data! So, back up them first on some other drive and than write them where you want.

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