Portable 500gb hard drive now only shows 488 megs RAW.

[chrisyroid]

I don't know where to post this so forgive me.
Seeing that this problem was created with VB I thought it would be a good idea to post it in these forums.

I was experimenting with trying to get VirtualBox to see a USB drive as a hard disk. I told VB to look for a vmdk file on my hard drive that I created. That file pointed to the drive number on my system. I set it to "6" and when I plugged in my SATA drive the number unknowingly changed to "7" I ran VB and tried to format the USB flash drive (now the 500gb portable hard drive) and attempted to format it. It failed. I didn't notice what I had done until I had unplugged the 500gb drive and plugged it back in. That's when Windows told me the drive wasn't formated. I checked disk management and saw that only 488 megs was identified as RAW and the rest was unallocated. I'm wondering if I can recover from this disaster as I had a boat load of data on it.

The drive and the data it's self were completely usable up until I unplugged it and plugged it back in. In fact I had Steam running on it while I was unknowingly messing it up.

[BillG]

It really does not matter what program you were using. If you have formatted the drive, the data which was was previously on the drive is unavailable.All format utilities that I know of warn you of that. Even if the format failed to complete, you have probably destroyed the old master file table. Recovery is usually expensive and unreliable.

[stefan.becker]

Recover via Backup.

If you have no Backup, that were not important data.

For the future: Better use vdi files on a real harddisk. Or use Shared Folders to access Partitions.

Raw Disc Access is only a function for people exact knowing what they do. And for people with Backup.

[Sasquatch]

You should have read the warning more careful:

Warning
Raw hard disk access is for expert users only. Incorrect use or use of an outdated configuration can lead to total loss of data on the physical disk. Most importantly, do not attempt to boot the partition with the currently running host operating system in a guest. This will lead to severe data corruption.

[mpack]

Raw Disc Access is only a function for people exact knowing what they do. And for people with Backup.

And even the people who know exactly what they are doing still worry about the consequences of making a mistake like the one described here: and look for a safer solution. In this case the safer solution would have been a VDI file or a shared folder, either one stored on the intended external drive. Raw access was never needed and was always an invitation for disaster.

Sorry to be so unsympathetic, but I find it exasperating that so many newbies seem to head directly for the raw access feature despite all warnings.