If you have accidentally formatted a hard drive or partition, you will get an empty disk with no files on it. Don’t consider your files lost just yet! If you didn’t put any new files on the formatted partition, you can easily recover all of your original files complete with the original directory structure by using widely available un-format tools that are often available for free. But there is a good chance to recover the formatted partition even if you saved a few files on it, or even installed Windows onto it! Just don’t attempt running a free un-format tool at this stage, as it will most probably just destroy what’s been left of your files.
How is this even possible? To answer this question, I have to cover the way the formatting works. If you are in a rush to recover your work, skip this section completely and go to the recovery software recommendation part.
Windows needs to format your disks in order to prepare it for keeping data such as files and folders. When Windows formats a disk, it does not wipe off its entire contents as you might believe judging from the time it takes to complete the formatting. Instead, it simply creates...