How Can I Recover The Data In My Old Hard Disk That I Accidentally Formatted?
@magtibaygom (4858)
Philippines
December 20, 2010 4:01am CST
I recently bought a new hard disk because my old one is already getting full. But while installing Windows on my new hard disk, I accidentally formatted my old hard disk.
I searched on the Internet for ways on how to recover the files in my old hard drive, there are people saying it is possible, through the use of iCare Recovery Software. But when I read the procedure carefully, it works if you the drive has a partition. My problem now is, it has no partition!
Help please... Do you know some proven ways of recovering or bringing back the Windows of the old hard disk, or if it is not possible, recovering the files, the important files that were overwritten?
3 responses
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
20 Dec 10
If you repartitioned the drive when you formatted it (or deleted an old partition), then it is practically impossible to recover the data. If the formatting did not repartition the drive AND was a quick format AND you have NOT written to the drive since, then it MAY be possible to recover some or all of the data.
A quick format does not erase any of the data on the drive/partition. It simply makes the old file tables (indexes) inactive. If you subsequently write anything at all to the drive, it will create a new set of file tables and these may well overwrite the old ones. This will mean that the old data on the drive, although it is still there, is virtually useless because there is nothing to say what the data is or what file it belongs to.
There are MANY guides to recovering data from a formatted drive. Here are a few. There is free software available but it may be more sensible to pay a little for better software. It depends how much your data is worth to you.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Recovering+Data+from+Formatted+Drives-a01073750287
http://www.tucows.com/article/1711
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/how-to-recover-data-from-formatted-hard-drive.html
http://www.ptdd.com/datarecovery/recover-formatted-partition.htm
All of these articles suggest software to use in recovery. I have not used any of these softwares (at least, not recently) so I cannot personally vouch for how easy they are to use. Most such software is, however, relatively straightforward. It usually lists the files that it can recover and you may have to supply the first character of the file name.
I suggest that you read all the articles (and search for more - I used the search term 'recovering data from a formatted drive'. You can vary the search term if you like: 'how to recover ...' would work as well.
1 person likes this
@magtibaygom (4858)
• Philippines
20 Dec 10
Thanks for that owlwings. I have read that also in those web pages that I have visited. You are right, formatting does not really erase the data stored on disk. It simply erase the address of those file (indexes) rendering them inactive. And thank you for those articles.
Right now, I am experimenting on a software I found online, from ADRC Data Recovery Center. Are you familiar with them? Can you give me some hint or feedback about this company?
I downloaded a freeware from them, a trial version of ADRC Data Recovery tools. With the free version, I will be able to recover at least five files. If I want more files be recovered, I need to purchase the paid version which is the ADRC Data Recovery Express software.
Right now, I am performing a scan of the old hard disk and I am amazed to see the files inside it using the ADRC tools!
What do you think? Is this a good deal?
If this is a good tool, then I will pursue purchasing the software..
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
20 Dec 10
I don't have any experience of ADRC but I have looked at the website and it seems to be a very good software. The company clearly knows about data recovery and does its main business in commercial data recovery in much more complex and critical situations than just 'home user' data. I guess that you are using ADRC Data Recovery Express (Shareware: $6.99 to purchase). If you manage to recover five files successfully, then $7 seems a very reasonable price for the full version. I would certainly pay that!
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
23 Dec 10
I had a very similar experience with trying to recover files from a hard disk a year or more ago. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the software I used (but it wasn't ADRC).
The situation was rather different in that the disk I was trying to recover was corrupted and would not boot at all. I had reformatted it but was certain that I had done nothing else to it afterwards. Like you, I did manage to recover some files but most of them were corrupted (even though they looked OK, they contained incomplete, damaged or simply rubbish data). I was also able to recover folders but they contained nothing. I put it down to a terminally corrupted file system, due to the crash, and decided to cut my losses and go no further. By the time I had got another machine in order to try to work on the disk, some time had elapsed and I had actually forgotten much of what was on the disk which I needed to recover! I can only say that life goes on and many things, in any case, are replaceable!
@lovedude (4447)
• India
20 Dec 10
Above response are almost from best people of mylot.. so I need not to add much :-)
Yeah it's right that if you format your hard drive and don't overwrite it with other contents. you can recover it as formatting data will remove your entries from FAT or NTFS.. recovery software finds data from cylinders and sectors and show you if they can show in original file name or else in binary/hex format and sometimes can't recover few data too if you overwrite that sector.
ok. enough knowledge when you loose the data.. :-) now I got the same problem.. and I found my 90% of data back from a software.. Get Data Back from FAT32 and NTFS..
you can download it from
http://adf.ly/170221/kdownloadsoftware
choose the version either FAT32 if your file system was in FAT32
and choose NTFS if it was in NTFS..
Good Luck.. and let me know if you can recover your data..
@onlinetraveller (473)
• India
20 Dec 10
i think it is not possible
it is possible only when os is in separate partition
it is formatted then we can recover data it entire drive is formatted
then it is not possible to recover recovery softwares work on accidentally crashed
systems
