HELP ME! I accidentally formatted a hard drive!

Your problem, hardware or software, may not be exactly the same as that of the original poster of this older thread, and it can be very confusing for everybody if we try to answer more than one question in each thread, which can also result in you applying the wrong advice to your particular problem.

In order for us to give your problem our proper attention to try to solve it, would you kindly start your own thread, describing the trouble you are having in the fullest detail, including completing your details to show what Mac or iDevice you are using, what operating system, and what version of the application in question. Please remember to post in the forum relevant to your hardware or version of OS X. A full list of all the support forums is here:

http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

Please stop responding to old posts; it brings them to the top and confuses people browsing ASC looking for new information. This one is 7 years old, and I'm sure the OP has resolved their problem by now, most likely by an upgrade to a newer computer.

HELP !

i have done the same thing , formated my ntfs drive as a mac journaled 😕

is there any chance i can recover my files with name integrity and file structure ??

i've tryed also Data Rescue 3 ,i can get the files back , but it's a list of files that

do not make sense anymore ..

please help

How it formatted 1 tb in 30 seconds is amazing as I hit cancel as soon as I realized my error.

Unless you specifically choose a full format (every sector is formatted), the default in both Windows and the Mac is a fast format. Which basically means wiping out the file table in the first few cylinders of the drive.

For both sgrin77 and dreamrec, that's just what Data Rescue does. It's supposed to try and restore the original names, but rarely does. FileSalvage also attempts to give recovered files their original names and does succeed somewhat more often, but still nothing to brag about.

Kurt Lang wrote:

First and foremost, stop using the drive for anything. Otherwise, you will begin overwriting information you are trying to recover.

To attempt this yourself, you first need to put the drive back the way it was so it will show up in recovery software. Both options below require the drive to be formatted as a Mac partition.

1) Go back to Disk Utility and make the drive a single partition as OS X Extended, which is where it was to begin with. DO NOT choose any options such as a zero write erase. Only the quick repartitioning. That will rewrite just the file table and leave the rest of the drive alone.

2) Purchase either Data Rescue 3 or FileSalvage. DO NOT download them to, or install them on the drive you are trying to recover.

3) If you have no other drive to install the recovery software to, you can purchase them on a bootable disk. But that still leaves you needing a second drive to recover your files to. You cannot recover files to the same drive you are working from, as it will overwrite files at the same time it is trying to recover them. So you will also have to purchase another drive. Internal, or external, and format it for Mac OS Extended.

If after that, you still can't recover what you need, your only option is a recovery service, such as Drive Savers. This can easily run over a thousand dollars.

Thank you for your instruction. I have tried your advice. It is really great. I have restored 99% of my files from my formatted hard disk drive.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!

You're welcome. Good to see you managed to recover most everything.

Did You solved it?
Plz help me, my mac erased 1tb in just 20s and i can't cancel or do anything with it. Even when I try in Windows 7 computer.