Need help, messed up external harddrive

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Ok, I have a WD 500gb External drive that I had over 100gb of info stored from my windows computer. My Imac asked me if I wanted to back up, and now it is reformatted to OSX. I have lost all of my information and pictures...and it won't work on my windows 7 laptop. Is there anything I can do?:'(
 
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Mac Pro (2019) 3.3 ghz 12-Core 96GB mem Vega Pro II
Unfortunately if it is reformatted to OSX, I believe all the information is gone
 
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I
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There is not a way I can retrieve the files off the computer? Oh well. That's life. Stuff happens...but I still love this thing. Thanks.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
late 2011 mac Mini, 2.3 GHz core i5, 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, Sierra, Retina display iPad, Iphone 5S
You may want to give Photorec a try. I have recovered drives in similar situations using this. You can find it here:

PhotoRec - CGSecurity

Bill
 

chscag

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2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
If you've already copied a backup on to the external drive after it was reformatted, you're not going to be able to recover with Data Rescue 3 or Photorec. If you haven't written anything to the drive yet, give Data Rescue 3 a try. Download their trial version to test before spending $99 on a license.
 

chscag

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Data Rescue or Stellar Phoenix Mac would be able to recover your lost data because while scanning these data recovery programs scan the drive deeply and pull out the recoverable data as much as possible. I hope these programs will help you.

As stated above, once the data has been overwritten neither Data Rescue 3 or Stellar Phoenix Mac are going to be able to recover the lost data. Only an expensive data recovery service has any chance of getting the data back and even that can be iffy.
 
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Yeah you are absolutely right chscag the overwritten data can't be recovered by any data recovery programs.
 

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