[Solved] HELP - I accidentally reformatted my Windows drive to exFAT

[thescottc]

On my hack I dual boot Windows 10 alongside my OSX Sierra installation. Today, while hastily trying to reformat a Kingston 64GB USB stick I instead reformatted my Windows 10-containing Kingston SSD to exFAT.

Now I haven't done a single thing with it since, so presumably all the data is intact and not overwritten. Does anyone know if there's any steps I can follow to restore it to its previous state without reinstalling everything?

Thankfully, I only use it for gaming, so there's nothing important on there... but I'm stressed... and I need to game!

Thanks in advance!

 

[thescottc]

I saw a suggestion on a Linux forum to try Hiren’s BootCD for a similar problem. So I’ll see if that works...

 

[thescottc]

Haven't got as far as trying the BootCD (judging by their page it hasn't been updated in several years) but I was able to use Easeus to verify that all the important data on the SSD is still intact. I had been planning to move my Windows drive to a larger SSD anyways, so I decided I will just do a fresh install and move over any save files, etc. afterwards.

 

[Going Bald]

On my hack I dual boot Windows 10 alongside my OSX Sierra installation. Today, while hastily trying to reformat a Kingston 64GB USB stick I instead reformatted my Windows 10-containing Kingston SSD to exFAT.

Now I haven't done a single thing with it since, so presumably all the data is intact and not overwritten. Does anyone know if there's any steps I can follow to restore it to its previous state without reinstalling everything?

Thankfully, I only use it for gaming, so there's nothing important on there... but I'm stressed... and I need to game!

Thanks in advance!

If you formatted a drive EXFAT, then you destroyed any data on the drive. Recovery is not possible - re-format the drive and install Win10 from scratch.

 

[thescottc]

If you formatted a drive EXFAT, then you destroyed any data on the drive. Recovery is not possible - re-format the drive and install Win10 from scratch.

Yes, that's what I ended up doing.