A 200GB Windows SSD Partition Was Formatted During Dual Boot: Three Months Later
Recovery may be possible only if the original data still exists on the SSD; after a format and a three-month delay, the odds can be poor because of TRIM, garbage collection and later disk activity. A quote from a lab is not an independently measured recovery probability. First establish what was formatted and whether an old copy exists elsewhere.
In this 200GB dual-boot partition-loss case on Reddit, a 512GB Windows SSD lost a partition containing years of school and college photos. The brother disclosed the event about three months later. The owner had no configured backups and was quoted approximately INR 20,000 for a low-confidence recovery attempt. A follow-up says the brother was not sure whether software was installed to the lost partition, so the actual write history is still uncertain.
Find the Partition History Before Buying Recovery Software
Stop nonessential work on the physical SSD. Establish whether dual-boot setup only reformatted the old data partition, deleted its partition entry, or wrote a new operating system across the same sectors. These are different recovery cases. Check whether any copy survived on an older laptop, phone, cloud photo account, school drive, transferred folder or exported archive. The user confirmed they did not configure a backup, which does not prove no independent copy exists.
Kingston explains SSD TRIM and garbage collection: after a supported delete or format, the controller can treat old blocks as discardable even before visible space is reused. A scanner cannot reverse completed erasure.
When Is an SSD Scan Worth Attempting?
Decide From the Disk State
- A full, verified independent copy exists: Restore from that source instead of scanning the old SSD.
- The original SSD is readable and important areas have not been reused: Consider an expert review or an image-first scan to another healthy device, while accepting that TRIM may leave nothing usable. Do not install recovery software onto the affected SSD.
- A read-only scan returns only empty data or no valid files: A different license does not automatically improve the result; ask a specialist to assess whether any recoverable regions remain before paying for further work.
The practical decision is whether evidence supports a recoverable surviving copy, not how many tools can rescan the same SSD. Microsoft recovery guidance recommends minimizing disk use and saving any recovered files to a different physical device.