HELP! Accidentally format Wii HDD on Wii U - Restore?

[themaniac123]

Okay, so this is on me a little I think because I think this was preventable.

I have an external HDD with GC & Wii stuff on, and on the Wii U when turning on, it asks if you want to format or cancel - I told the kids CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL but they're kids, so I should've stealthed the drive (Was struggling as I didnt have access to a Windows PC)

ANYWAY, little one has format the drive.

Is there any way to restore all the goodness?

Thank you!

 

[Kopimist]

Was the drive in FAT32 format? If so, forensics software should be able to recover the data as long as it hasn't been completely overwritten. I cant think of any freeware or open source options ATM but I'm sure there's something that would do the trick. Had this been for Wii U titles, drive would be encrypted and it would unrecoverable but bc it's vWii in theory it should be do able.

 

[themaniac123]

I honestly cant remember; I will do a bit of research on it - i'd imagine so.

I'll run it through some recovery software

 

[Sypherone]

Uhmm.. normaly if a file is removed its still on there because only the link to it was removed. So it can be restored.
The Question is, how deep goes the WiiU format. If its fastformat so the links are removed and the Bootsector with allocation table is new written. So theroretically the files could be restored.
But if its full a full format, all sectors on the drive will be checked for errors and the data completly removed.

There are different tools for free available to restore deleted data from drives, wich could be tryed.

 

[depaul]

Hopefully you may restore the old partition with windows.
Have you tried Easeus partition (free)? it had a menu to recover deleted partition.

 

[V10lator]

I cant think of any freeware or open source options ATM but I'm sure there's something that would do the trick.

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

 

[mrmagicm]

I think the best tool in this case should be christophe grenier's tool TestDisk
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Try to change the partition to from special wiiU partitioning to FAT32 if it was in fat32....But to do this you must know the tool a bit, as it's a bit complicated to understand it.
Concerning Hard drive recovery, I've tested at least 63 partition recovery tools (and that's is more than HUNDREDS OF HOURS so I'm kinda a noob expert on this field!) on 2 drives with pbs....Seems the 3 best are Data Rescue, partition Guru and Hetman partition recovery! Many of recovery tools didn't even saw my dead drives, those two had much more success for recovering partition or recovering files.

 

[V10lator]

I think the best tool in this case should be christophe grenier's tool TestDisk

Look at my link above: PhotoRec is part of the TestDisk suite but it's completely filesystem independent as it just scans the raw medium block by block for known file patterns...

//EDIT: A few quotes from the link:

it will still work even if your media's file system has been severely damaged or reformatted.

For more safety, PhotoRec uses read-only access to handle the drive or memory card you are about to recover lost data from.

PhotoRec ignores the file system; this way it works even if the file system is severely damaged.

PhotoRec searches for known file headers. If there is no data fragmentation, which is often the case, it can recover the whole file. PhotoRec recognizes and recovers numerous file formats including ZIP, Office, PDF, HTML, JPEG and various graphics file formats. The whole list of file formats recovered by PhotoRec contains more than 480 file extensions (about 300 file families).

To recover these lost files, PhotoRec first tries to find the data block (or cluster) size. If the file system is not corrupted, this value can be read from the superblock (ext2/ext3/ext4) or volume boot record (FAT, NTFS). Otherwise, PhotoRec reads the media, sector by sector, searching for the first ten files, from which it calculates the block/cluster size from their locations. Once this block size is known, PhotoRec reads the media block by block (or cluster by cluster). Each block is checked against a signature database which comes with the program and has grown in the type of files it can recover ever since PhotoRec's first version came out.

If the data is not fragmented, the recovered file should be either identical to or larger than the original file in size. In some cases, PhotoRec can learn the original file size from the file header, so the recovered file is truncated to the correct size. If, however, the recovered file ends up being smaller than its header specifies, it is discarded. Some files, such as *.MP3 types, are data streams. In this case, PhotoRec parses the recovered data, then stops the recovery when the stream ends.

When a file is recovered successfully, PhotoRec checks the previous data blocks to see if a file signature was found but the file wasn't able to be successfully recovered (that is, the file was too small), and it tries again. This way, some fragmented files can be successfully recovered.

 

[mrmagicm]

Yep, but for HDD, Testdisk is better.....Have you tested both in this type of case like I did? Christophe is a very cool guy.
Photorec is better for Sd Card and micro Sd I would say,

 

[V10lator]

Yep, but for HDD, Testdisk is better.....Have you tested both in this type of case like I did?

Yes I did. I'm recovering files from bad discs regulary. Don't get fooled by the name: PhotoRec started as a tool to recover images from SD but it evolved into much more. Also both tools are fundamentally different: TestDisk tries to recover the whole partition (which might be damaged beyond recovery) while PhotoRec tries to recover the individual files. Still both tools are under the same umbrella / from the same developers.

Also the good thing about PhotoRec is that it's using the damaged disc in read-only mode. So you're still able to use other tools in case it won't work. This is important for people not experienced in that topic (experienced people won't work directly on the disc anyway but dump an image, copy that to have a backup and work on that image only. This is just to remove the risc of further corruptions from failed recovery attempts).

//EDIT: The last statement (that one should work on a image, not on the storage medium itself) also means it doesn't make any difference if you're recovering from SD, SSD, HDD, DVD, ... A raw image is a raw image no matter where it comes from. Also the filesystems are the same, no matter what medium, so why should there be a difference between SD and HDD?

//EDIT²: Only difference between flash and spinning medium is that flash might use something like SAS TRIM / SD secure erase / ... so data might be impossible to get recovered, no matter what tool.

 

[mrmagicm]

Exact....TestDisk tries to recover the whole partition ....so that is what themaniac123 wants, no?
I don't remember why, but christophe told me it was better to use Testdisk for hdd, because more specialize for that medium.

 

[V10lator]

@mrmagicm I understand your point and it is valid.
Still from personal experience I would try PhotoRec before TestDisk on a corrupted/reformatted partition. Again: It's working in read-only mode, so there's nothing to loose (except when the storage medium is physically damaged, so even read-only access might corrupt more data (like a head crash deforming the head so it's scraping off the magnetic plates when moved) but that's not the case here).

 

[V10lator]

I am looking for a guide on how to recover files from formatted hard drive.

Did you read the thread?

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

...

 

[Captain_N]

I use ontrack recovery enterprise and puran file recovery.