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Hi folks. I use Win 7 on my desktop. I have a 1TB HDD that I partitioned so I could boot from C: drive and then store data on the larger "partition" D: drive, a common practice. Well I bought a SSD to install as a boot drive and loaded a fresh copy of Windows. Now I intended to delete the old C: drive from the HDD and use the entire HDD as my storage.
Ok, so I tried to re-alocate the space, but I did something back-asswards and deleted my storage. Now as soon as I seen I screwed up I stopped imediately as to not truly corrupt the data, thus be able to recover it. ---My question is what to use for this.---
I tried a program called TESTDISC 7.0 which seems to just copy every individual file to a another location and is nearly useless to me as it leaves me with thousands of unnamed files which are not in any particular order. One file of video, audio or document may be nowhere near it's companions and all are just labeled with numbers. Useless! Isn't there a program that will simply correct the problems on the drive itself and render it readable again? My drive now just produces an error note "drive D: is inaccesible".

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Short, practical plan for (and with the same symptom): stop using the affected disk immediately and do not write anything to it. That single step preserves the best chance of recovery — once sectors are overwritten the original data is gone. ’s tutorial is a good start; below are concrete next steps and safer alternatives to the raw file-dump approach that produced thousands of numbered files. (cgsecurity.org)

Make a full sector image of the 1 TB disk before attempting any repair. Work from the image, not the original disk. On Linux a reliable tool is GNU ddrescue; a typical command (replace device and paths) is:

ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdX /mnt/recovery/hdd-image.img /mnt/recovery/hdd-image.log

That creates an image and a log so the operation can be resumed later. Imaging protects the original media and lets recovery tools be run safely against the copy. (gnu.org)

Use TestDisk (not PhotoRec) to look for and restore the lost partition table and NTFS/FAT boot records. Typical TestDisk flow: run TestDisk -> select the physical disk -> choose the detected partition table type -> Analyse -> Quick Search -> if needed Deeper Search -> press P to list files on found partitions -> when the correct partition is found choose Write to restore the table. PhotoRec is a file-carver that ignores file names and folders (which explains the numbered files seen earlier); TestDisk attempts to restore the filesystem and directory structure. Verify with TestDisk’s file list before using Write. (cgsecurity.org)

If TestDisk cannot restore the partition or the filesystem is heavily damaged, consider commercial tools (R‑Studio, EaseUS Partition/Data Recovery, etc.) or a professional data‑recovery service — they can succeed where free tools cannot, especially if sectors are failing. After any successful restoration, copy all recovered data to a different disk before running repair utilities (e.g., chkdsk). (r-studio.com)

Short troubleshooting checklist:

  • Do not initialize, format, or write to the disk.
  • Image the disk first (ddrescue or a trusted imaging tool).
  • Try TestDisk to restore the partition table; use PhotoRec only if file‑carving is acceptable.
  • If unsure or the drive shows hardware errors, stop and consult a recovery lab.

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Member Avatar for Brittany_3

I had the same problem. Can you help me. Thanks

Edited by happygeek because: spam link deleted
Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

Have a look at this and see if it helps.

Member Avatar for fuzebox40

Ok, looking now.

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