Cannot scan a partition?

[Kenny Scantz]

I stupidly  created a windows tool on my USB and it deleted all my files. The drive is 250gig, but windows tool has created a partition and now it is 30gig.  Other recovery tools can scan the partition, but I am struggling to get Recuva to scan the lost partition. It only shows the 30gig one.

Am I missing somethjing or does Recuva not offer that kind of scan?

Edited September 21, 2021 by Kenny Scantz

[nukecad]

The Windows Media Creation Tool formats the USB drive to a partition of about 32GB for a 64-bit installation. - It does warn you that all files on the drive will be deleted and advises you to make a backup of any files on the drive before continuing.

Because it's a reformat then that deletion will include the original Windows Master File Table, which is what Recuva normally uses to recover deleted files.
The new MFT will only show what is on the newly formatted (approx. 32GB) partition.

However you should (may?) be able to find the deleted files on the rest of the drive with a 'Deep Scan' in Wizard mode.
https://www.ccleaner.com/docs/recuva/using-recuva/wizard-mode/the-deep-scan-option
In particular read the 3 notes there, - you will still have to do some work to rename any files that are recovered.
Obviously you need to recover to a different drive to avoid overwriting the data that you are trying to recover.

I'm sure that in future you will be making regular backups of your important files, regardless of mistakes a drive could get corrupted or fail at anytime and trying to recover from a broken drive is (almost) impossible.