Solved unallotted drive ?

Winuser · Jan 26, 2025

I want to thank everyone for the helpful suggestions given to me. I was able to restore my files and hopefully this thread will be helpful for others that may make the same mistake I did.

badrobot · Jan 26, 2025

Winuser said:
the drive was just marked as unallotted and nothing actually got deleted.

Files were basically deleted (by deleting the partitions) it just didn't finish re-formatting the dtive that's why it became unallocated. All unformatted drives appear as unallocated.
Good to hear you were able to recover the files. If you didn't stop it immediately and allow the drive to format, it will take longer to deep scan the drive (sometimes up to 7 hours) before recovery.
After the drive has been formatted, all deleted files will be renamed to default names i.e. File 01, File 02, etc. But since the drive was not formatted, all filenames of the deleted files were still intact upon recoveru.

SIW2 · Jan 26, 2025

Depends what you did. You said unallocated which would indicate you deleted the partition.

In that situation, always try a partition recovery program ( not a data recovery program ) first.

If a partition is sucessfully recovered everything will still be on it. Unless you did something other than just delete it.

Marie SWE · Jan 26, 2025

Winuser said:
I am going to install TestDisk as an extra recovery program if needed. On my main computer I'm running the Canary builds so I make backup images almost weekly. On my Second desktop, even though it's running the Canary builds I only do occasional backups. There's no important programs or files I have to worry about. To stat from a clean install would take a few hours at the most. Getting back to the D: drive on my main computer, The important files are on on OneDrive and I also have a backup of them. The other files are not important so if they did get lost I wouldn't have anything to lose. It just that I made a mistake and wanted to recover from it. Thinking about it, it was more of a challenge then a necessity. Not really knowing for sure, I was thinking that because I stopped the install when I did that the drive was just marked as unallotted and nothing actually got deleted.

I mostly use testdisk for lost partitions and on Linux i also use photorec that is on the same page as testdisk.
For windows when i just delete a file and 1second later realize i deleted the wrong file.. I use the free Resuva Recuva - Free Download
Its small, its easy of use and i have not yet had to dig deep in to a system for one deleted file.
Those times i have to really dig.. then its do to disaster as disk failure and then i use a whole other set of tools that isn't directly home usage
But Resuva and Testdisk can save you a lot of times

Winuser · Jan 26, 2025

badrobot said:
Files were basically deleted it just didn't finish re-formatting the dtive that's why it became unallocated. All unformatted drives appear as unallocated.
Good to hear you were able to recover the files. If you didn't stop it immediately and allow the drive to format, it will take longer to deep scan the drive (sometimes up to 7 hours) before recovery.

If I hadn't stopped when I did, I don't know if I would have recovered the fies. In the past I've had files that I couldn't recover just because I was holding the shift key when I hit the delete key. Even though nothing was written to the drive I still couldn't recover them. Even though the programs I used coud find them, they couldn't restore them.

Winuser · Jan 26, 2025

Marie SWE said:
I mostly use testdisk for lost partitions and on Linux i also use photorec that is on the same page as testdisk.
For windows when i just delete a file and 1second later realize i deleted the wrong file.. I use the free Resuva Recuva - Free Download
Its small, its easy of use and i have not yet had to dig deep in to a system for one deleted file.
Those times i have to really dig.. then its do to disaster as disk failure and then i use a whole other set of tools that isn't directly home usage
But Resuva and Testdisk can save you a lot of times

I just responded to badrobot's post and told him about not being able to restore deleted files because I used the Shift-Delete keys. Recuva was one of the programs I used. Recuva has rescued me more times than it has failed so to me it is worth having.

Marie SWE · Jan 26, 2025

Winuser said:
I just responded to badrobot's post and told him about not being able to restore deleted files because I used the Shift-Delete keys. Recuva was one of the programs I used. Recuva has rescued me more times than it has failed so to me it is worth having.

Yeah

Recovery is binary.. either it works or it dont. and its a 50/50 chance
Windows environment is the worst to be in for recovery.. it has sooooo many background processes going on and writs to the disks almost 24/7 and that is bad when doing data recovery.. Just open the resource monitor and look at disk activity. :eyeroll:

I have inactivated all background crap as restorepoints, telemetry, updates defrag/trim/optimization, shadow copy etc.. and with less diskactivity the greater the chance is for a file recovery..
But..... you have to remember to manually maintain the system on regular intervals... that part can be missed to often. :party:

*lol*

badrobot · Jan 26, 2025

Winuser said:
If I hadn't stopped when I did, I don't know if I would have recovered the fies. In the past I've had files that I couldn't recover just because I was holding the shift key when I hit the delete key. Even though nothing was written to the drive I still couldn't recover them. Even though the programs I used coud find them, they couldn't restore them.

Yes you will still recover but will take longer and you will lose all filenames.

Winuser · Jan 26, 2025

badrobot said:
Yes you will still recover but will take longer and you will lose all filenames.

I'm so glad I realized my mistake when I did. I did get my Drive D: SSD working. For reason I don't understand the SATA port stopped working. As a test I swapped the ports that my two SSDs were plugged into, and the new drive stopped working. I switched the drive to the bottom port, and it worked. The desktop is back together and working. Now I just need to set it up. I'm going to start a new thread because I'm going to have a few questions about setting Windows 24H2.

Winuser · Jan 26, 2025

So far, I'm impressed with 24H2. It's running smooth as silk. I haven't manually checked for updates yet. I'll wait until I make a Macrium image first.

Winuser · Jan 26, 2025

Winuser said:
So far, I'm impressed with 24H2. It's running smooth as silk. I haven't manually checked for updates yet. I'll wait until I make a Macrium image first.

Everything was running great until 24H2 did an update. When I did the restart all the fun began. I got two error message and my second monitor wasn't working. When I checked in device manager the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 T driver wasn't working. I tried updating it by hitting on update. When that failed I pointed it to a USB drive that had all of the drivers from my Canary build and that failed. I was able to remove two updates but it didn't help. Finally I decided to do a repair install. When the computer rebooted I couldn't boot back into either one the OS's. I took a break for awhile and when I came back I used Macrium to fix the boot problem. I booted into the Canary build and set the correct boot options In Easy BCD. I did a restart to make sure I could boot back into the Canary build. it worked so I restarted and chose the 24H2 build. I had to sign back into my MS account and get a code sent to my phone to sign-in. I'm back into 24H2 and so far it's working Ok. I'm a little leery about doing a restart. I got about 3 hours of sleep last night because I wanted to get my computer working again. It was bugging me so much that I just had to keep trying.

badrobot · Jan 26, 2025

Winuser said:
Everything was running great until 24H2 did an update. When I did the restart all the fun began. I got two error message and my second monitor wasn't working. When I checked in device manager the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 T driver wasn't working. I tried updating it by hitting on update. When that failed I pointed it to a USB drive that had all of the drivers from my Canary build and that failed. I was able to remove two updates but it didn't help. Finally I decided to do a repair install. When the computer rebooted I couldn't boot back into either one the OS's. I took a break for awhile and when I came back I used Macrium to fix the boot problem. I booted into the Canary build and set the correct boot options In Easy BCD. I did a restart to make sure I could boot back into the Canary build. it worked so I restarted and chose the 24H2 build. I had to sign back into my MS account and get a code sent to my phone to sign-in. I'm back into 24H2 and so far it's working Ok. I'm a little leery about doing a restart. I got about 3 hours of sleep last night because I wanted to get my computer working again. It was bugging me so much that I just had to keep trying.

Are you dual booting?

Winuser · Jan 26, 2025

badrobot said:
Are you dual booting?

Yes, I am dual booting. What I'm doing is testing 24H2 to see how it runs and if I like it. If I don't have any problems with it I'll slowly move away from the Canary Insider builds on this computer. The Insider builds have become boring. For me to just drop out on this computer means days of work getting all my programs and setting moved over. This way I can slowly switch over from the Insider builds if I decide to drop out on this computer. I will continue using the Insider builds on my other desktop and my laptop as long as I don't have any major problems..

badrobot · Jan 26, 2025

Winuser said:
Yes, I am dual booting. What I'm doing is testing 24H2 to see how it runs and if I like it. If I don't have any problems with it I'll slowly move away from the Canary Insider builds on this computer. The Insider builds have become boring. For me to just drop out on this computer means days of work getting all my programs and setting moved over. This way I can slowly switch over from the Insider builds if I decide to drop out on this computer. I will continue using the Insider builds on my other desktop and my laptop as long as I don't have any major problems..

Any OS version will usually encounter boot up problems after an update if you are dual booting. Been there. Done that. That's why I switched to hot swappable drives when I was testing OSes on my old rig.

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