Windows 10 Reset Accidently started on the Wrong Drive

[NDogLover]

Alright so I think I screwed up pretty bad tonight.

I was trying to boot from a USB drive, but it was telling me that there where missing boot files. I plugged the recovery USB into the PC and got that going. I chose the 'Just Erase my Files' option (I think that is what it was. It was the one if you were going to keep the PC, not the one if you are going to recycle it).

The stupid part was that I failed to unplug my STORAGE drive!!! It was reseting the storage drive!! I cancelled it at 1%.

I quickly booted into the original drive and checked my storage drive. All that was there was a Recovery.txt, which was blank.

What can I do? Besides huddle on the floor in a pool of tears? It was running for such a short period of time (maybe 2 - 5 seconds), that I really hope that it didn't have time to actually fully delete anything.

I really need some advice and the sooner the better!

Thank you!!

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@NDogLover

The first thing it likely did was zero out the partition boot records -- which will then indicate to Windows, that the partitions are empty, and or gone -- but do not despair, the files are actually still there.

As you continue to use the drive, you're overwriting the files and folders that got erased. The more you use it, the less likely you'll be able to recover anything on it

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the hard drive from the PC
2) Purchase a USB-to-Hard Driver adapter kit
3) Download and install this utility on a working PC: http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
4) Connect the old drive to the working PC
5) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tools does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the trial version is free: http://www.file-recovery.com/

Good Luck

[NDogLover]

I will give that a shot! The first thing I did was unplug the drive to prevent anything from getting written over. I will give that software a shot. Thanks for the help!