Windows 10: Formatted my portable hard drive into a ESD-USB

Hi, I was using windows media creation tool and I didn't expect it to overwrite my entire hard drive. I've tried using recuva but it just spits out a mess of files. Is it possible to undo what the creation tool did or at the very least recover some of the folder structure?

:)

 

How To Undo "ESD-USB" And Recover the lost folder structure and the lost files in the portable hard drive?

Hello ESD-USB,

Most likely your files on your portable drive is overwritten or deleted. In this case, you may consider to try using a third-party recovery program or go to a nearest local computer technician who can perform a recovery of your deleted files from your portable
hard drive. Also, I was able to find threads similar to your concern. Kindly refer to the links below:

Accidentally Converted External Hard Drive to "ESD-USB"

How To Undo "ESD-USB" And Recover Files?

Revert esd-usb

Note: Using a third-party software is completely at your own risk.
Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the use of Third Party Software can be solved.


Let me know if you have other concerns.

Regards.

 

External hard drive changed to esd-usb

While performing window media creation I have converted my external hard drive as bootable usb device (esd-usb). I couldn't recover my files in the hard drive . Need help

 

Formatted my portable hard drive into a ESD-USB

Hi velut

Recuva I find only works best when you have chosen to delete files, from say, your recycle bin.

Unfortunately formatting your portable hard-drive makes it very hard to recover any files, as it essentially overwrites files that were on the hard-drive.

That being said, it may only 'overwrite' some files.
: when files are deleted, they are marked as 'ready to be overwritten' which is then shown as free space.

I have had recent success using Ease US Recovery Wizard, but alas it only lets you recover a maximum of 2GB. You could choose to pay for the full version but it is probably not worth it if you are only going to use it once, so...

Another option is to take it to a computer shop that recovers data. I would get a few quotes to see if you can get a good deal.

Tech Radar has also posted their best picks for the best free 3rd party recovery software but I believe most of them will have limits for the amount of data you can recover.

If you need to make a bootable device (I am assuming that is why the media creation tool was used) in the future, I would recommend using a USB drive, portable Hard-drives are usually best for backup purposes. Also make sure the drive your are selecting is the correct one *Wink.