I formatted my primary hard drive yesterday, and while setting up a fresh Windows install I accidently deleted the partition on my external drive. I'm seeking advice on what procedure I should follow on data recovery efforts. The partition was FAT32, and now it shows up in Disk Manager as a healthy, active drive but with no file system. I can see it in the drive list but can't access it (drive E is not formatted). So my main question is whether or not I should set a new partition before trying to recover data? I'm assuming the less changes I make to the drive now the better my results will be, though I wasn't sure if setting a new partition would help recovery software find files. I ran about 2% of a GetDataBack scan and it was showing some familiar files. Thanks for any advice, Sean

If I were you I would try to first recovery data without formatting. If that doesn't work your only choice is to format and try again. John Cambece

You can look for partition repair or recovery utilities on the Internet. 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.

Hello, I suppose using Data Recovery tool - Partition Table Doctor or DataRecoveryWizard. It is imho the best one among it's family. Easy to use and powerful. It actually never failed me before. Recommended!