i recently accidentally reformatted my wd usb 2tb hard drive how can i recover it as it will not allow me to write anything
on to it.... (wdbaau0020hbk-01)

How exactly did you reformat the drive? Please explain the exact OS, OS version, command / GUI options that you used.

How long did the format command take to execute (approximately)?

Why did you reformat the drive - was there some problem you were trying to fix by doing that?

What exactly do you mean by "it will not allow me to write anything on to it"? You shouldn't be trying to write anything to the drive anyway, if you're trying to recover data from it, so don't try writing any more to the drive! But aside from that, what exactly were you trying to do, and what exact error message did you get?

I suggest listing step-by-step what you did, what happened, and what you decided as a result of that behaviour, to give more details about your story.

Please expect more questions after you answer the above questions, as readers try to clarify your story

P.S. How important is the data on the drive? How much would you spend to recover it? This information will help readers decide what options to give you.

+1 for Vulcan questions
At least it's an WD Element so no encryption to worry about.

Loki

Vulcan,

reformatted using xp home edition with sp2.
it took most of the day to format.
reformatted by accident after "knocking mains lead out of laptop" causing drive to stop registering on laptop.
tried reformatting using windows xp format tool in in drop down menu.

By "recover" I assume you mean wipe it and use it again?

I presume you don't need the data or I can't figure out how you can "accidently" let it format for a whole day.

I would say you are better off just RMA'ing it and get a new/refurb one from WD, assuming its under warranty.

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@dribs,

Thanks for that info. That answers my questions 1-3, doesn't answer question 4 (regarding the "cannot write" problem that you mentioned), and isn't as detailed as I had hoped about question 5 (the step-by-step list of what you've done). It also doesn't answer the question about importance, so I'll assume the data is unimportant and not spend too long on my reply. If the data actually is important, please reply to that earlier question.

I'm worried about the "drive ... stop registering on laptop" comment that you made, but that's not enough detail for me to understand the exact sequence of events. I'm assuming that the drive was not physically damaged by this, but if you have knocked the drive, that assumption may not be true.

In short - this sounds like a WinXP full format, on what I guess is an NTFS formatted drive. The actual data blocks should be untouched; part of the filesystem metadata ($MFT) will have been overwritten making successful recovery of some files likely to be less likely; if there were many files on the drive (meaning $MFT is larger than the default) then some filesystem metadata may not have been overwritten by the format, making successful recovery of the files in that (unerased) part of the MFT more likely.

However without details on the "cannot write" problem as I asked, as well as more details of what happened leading up to that behaviour, I don't want to waste time making more comments at this point, as I don't have enough info to be sure I've understood those important details. Other readers might understand your comments better than me.

As I said before, do not (attempt to) write to that drive!

Edited to add: Ah, while I've been typing this, I see that I have interpreted your word "recover" differently from pcimage, and I now see that this was ambiguous in your original posting. If you actually mean that you want to (try to) "fix" the drive, and not "recover data", then of course my reply would be different. Please clarify...

@pcimage - Very good point. Damn, I hadn't realised that the word "recover" might have meant "fix", as you have spotted.

dribs said it took most of the day to format. That tells me it was a complete & full format opposed to a "fast" format.

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Yes I already said that earlier :

At least for WinXP, that is no more destructive to the existing data than a WinXP quick format. That's why I asked which OS had been used to perform the format.

It still remains unclear whether the OP is trying to fix the drive and erase the data, or to recover the data from it...