My 2TB USB drive got reduced to 32GB, and it deleted all my files

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1

Today I got a new PC and wanted to install Windows 10 on it. I used my 2TB USB hard drive, which was full of my personal work files, to install the Windows setup. Somehow, it deleted all my files, and now the drive’s size is showing as 32GB, which is really strange! I tried using Recuva to recover the files, but it can’t seem to find anything.

Honestly, my priority is getting back the 2TB of personal files that got deleted. Restoring the USB drive to its original capacity would be a bonus, but it’s less important. I’m feeling super lost and could really use some help.

2

If you only did a quick format, there’s a chance some data is still there. From what I remember, Windows doesn’t send a trim signal to USB drives during a quick format. Just don’t write anything to that USB drive! Make a full sector-by-sector copy to another drive and work with the copy instead.

3

Use MiniTool Power Recovery software, at first test their partition recovery tool, if it fails then use file recovery. Because sometimes it can recover the whole partition as well

4

Download and run TestDisk, it has a raw recovery option. You’ll need another drive to recover the files to. Formatting, unless it’s low-level, just puts a new partition table and marks the previous data as free space. Most of your files are probably still there, except for those that got overwritten by the installation. I’ve had success with similar problems before.

5

Run TestDisk or PhotoRec to recover your files. Flashing an image like Windows installation media will format your drive and erase everything on it.

6

Looks like you formatted it as FAT32 instead of NTFS. A data recovery program should be able to recover some of your files.

7

When you create a Windows 10 installation media, it requires formatting the USB, and you probably got a notification about that but might have continued without realizing.

Can you explain how you went about installing Windows on the USB? If you formatted the drive, sadly, there’s not much you can do to recover the files.

8

Yeah, I continued without really paying attention since I’ve done it so many times before. Isn’t there any way to recover the files?

9

Since the drive was formatted, the data’s been overwritten, so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to recover it. There should’ve been a warning before formatting, and it’s always good to double-check. If the files are super important, you might want to reach out to a specialist, but honestly, the chances of recovery are slim.