Windows In a dilemma. Need suggestions please

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zoozoo

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Dear forum members/experts
I have got myself into deep trouble. Need your suggestions & expert views. Yesterday while trying to reset my windows 10 laptop, I encountered login password issue. I was trying to login but on each attempt, I was getting a password incorrect message. To overcome this issue, I thought of booting the laptop with a bootable USB drive. I have a 1 TB external HDD which has a lot of data but around 45 GB is free space. I converted it to a windows bootable USB drive without realizing what will happen to the data which is already in the HDD. I thought I will be able to see & use the data available on the HDD. Though I was able to boot up my laptop but now I'm unable to get the data back on the external hard disk. Also when i connect this HDD to my laptop I can see it's size has also reduced to around 45-50 GB.
1. Have I lost all the data that was available on the HDD before converting it to bootable disk?
2. How can I retrieve my data?
3. Why 1TB HDD is not showing it's full capacity & how to gain lost ground?

Please help in providing your valuable suggestions & replies to my above queries. Thanks in advance.
 
Go to disk management and see if there is any partition with no drive letter assigned.

Also, you converted/made the external drive to a bootable one so 99.9% in such scenarios the target drive/disk gets wiped/formatted completely to house only the OS related files.
In this case you have to try your luck on data recovery tools like recuva, getdataback, stellar, easeus partition manager etc..

First let us know on the above two points..
 
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If you've not resized or created a new partition for windows on usb HDD then surely you've destroyed it all.
 
As told already first try above mention steps, 99% your data was wiped while creating bootable drive so you are left with only data recovery option. make sure to use some other HD (Laptop) while recovering the data as if you write anything on external HD the chances of recovery will go down fast.
 
zoozoo said:
Dear forum members/experts
I have got myself into deep trouble. Need your suggestions & expert views. Yesterday while trying to reset my windows 10 laptop, I encountered login password issue. I was trying to login but on each attempt, I was getting a password incorrect message. To overcome this issue, I thought of booting the laptop with a bootable USB drive. I have a 1 TB external HDD which has a lot of data but around 45 GB is free space. I converted it to a windows bootable USB drive without realizing what will happen to the data which is already in the HDD. I thought I will be able to see & use the data available on the HDD. Though I was able to boot up my laptop but now I'm unable to get the data back on the external hard disk. Also when i connect this HDD to my laptop I can see it's size has also reduced to around 45-50 GB.
1. Have I lost all the data that was available on the HDD before converting it to bootable disk?
2. How can I retrieve my data?
3. Why 1TB HDD is not showing it's full capacity & how to gain lost ground?

Please help in providing your valuable suggestions & replies to my above queries. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Don't worry, you can still recover most of your data.
JUST DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING ON THE DISK.
Even partitioning or resizing the disk do not destroy any data.(may corrupt few files though)
Connect with me over PM and share your mobile number i will guide you with the process.
You will need an empty storage more than or similar in size to the data you want to recover.
If the HDD was encrypted, you will need to have the password in order to decrypt the data.
 
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Thanks. yes surely will follow as suggested
Good. Your reply has somewhat reduced my anxiety. I have not done anything else on the hard drive. Simply disconnected & kept aside. The drive is not an encrypted one. Just a normal 1 TB external hard drive

zero_cool said:
I made a similar mistake once. I suggest you give Easeus Data Recovery a shot.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Shall I go for a paid version or free will do?
 
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zoozoo said:
Thanks. yes surely will follow as suggested
Good. Your reply has somewhat reduced my anxiety. I have not done anything else on the hard drive. Simply disconnected & kept aside. The drive is not an encrypted one. Just a normal 1 TB external hard drive


Thanks. Shall I go for a paid version or free will do?
Click to expand...
Try free first before thinking of paid. If free version displays your data then you might think of paid or ahem ver. :p if you got it..
 
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samiryadav said:
Don't worry, you can still recover most of your data.
JUST DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING ON THE DISK.
Even partitioning or resizing the disk do not destroy any data.(may corrupt few files though)
Connect with me over PM and share your mobile number i will guide you with the process.
You will need an empty storage more than or similar in size to the data you want to recover.
If the HDD was encrypted, you will need to have the password in order to decrypt the data.
Click to expand...
How can I PM you? Not able to see any PM button/link.
 
You will be able to restore most of your data...please don't write on the drive anymore and if the data lost was really important, pay up for a commercial data recovery software.
I've seen "Stellar" being used in our organization for accidentally formatted thumb drives, both Mac and Windows laptops. There may be better softwares available, but Stellar does work.
But if the drive was encrypted and you forgot the password, nothing will work ( but some recovery labs do work with encrypted drives but the service is VERY EXPENSIVE)
 
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nRiTeCh said:
Go to disk management and see if there is any partition with no drive letter assigned.

Also, you converted/made the external drive to a bootable one so 99.9% in such scenarios the target drive/disk gets wiped/formatted completely to house only the OS related files.
In this case you have to try your luck on data recovery tools like recuva, getdataback, stellar, easeus partition manager etc..

First let us know on the above two points..
Click to expand...
Attached is the screen shot of the disk management output of the HDD. Can I have your views please?
 

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samiryadav said:
just go to my name and press START CONVERSATION
I have sent you a PM.
Click to expand...
Thanks Samir for the help extended & the suggestions. I could not do much today as I was travelling the whole day. Will try to go thru all the suggestions sometime tomorrow
 
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