Anyone tried to recover files from a formatted hard drive?

[MonBK]

If so what program did you use?

Any help appreciated.

[mailman]

Ask Alfred

[MonBK]

Originally Posted by mailman

Ask Alfred

I did and he has helped me so much that I'm now trying to solve it on my own.

I've found a program from ParetoLogic that seems to do the trick but before I purchase it I wanted to know if anyone has experienced it.

[wantonebad]

Not for many years Mon, but I was successful getting photo's off of a Fat32 drive that was reformatted using a free piece of software I downloaded from cnet.com. Don't remember it's name but there are a bunch of partition recovery apps that can do the trick for what I assume is an NTFS drive? Checkout some of the geek forums to see what they recommend. I haven't looked at partition recovery for years so I'd be remiss if I told you what to use.

[MonBK]

Originally Posted by wantonebad

Not for many years Mon, but I was successful getting photo's off of a Fat32 drive that was reformatted using a free piece of software I downloaded from cnet.com. Don't remember it's name but there are a bunch of partition recovery apps that can do the trick for what I assume is a NTFS drive? Checkout some of the geek forums to see what they recommend. I haven't looked at partition recovery for years so I'd be remiss if I told what to use.

Thanks Marc.

[greggsiam]

So many questions....

How was the drive formatted?

Typically when a drive is formatted, it's not in the traditional sense and all the files are still there. Back in the day formatting meant writing all 0's to the drive. Today, formatting just means removing pointers in the File Allocation Table (FAT). That means the files are still there, there are just no pointers to them.

So, if this is the case, as long as the files are not overwritten, they can easily be recovered. For testing, I've thrown 200 images on a SD card, formatted it (quick format in PC, basically not writing 0's to all sectors), then recovered all 200 images with no errors.

What files types are they? Not that is matters, but if you were looking for image files, a program like Photorec would be my first choice.

Is the drive an OS drive, or just another drive in your system? If just another drive, load up the software of choice and run it on the drive. If OS drive, it gets more complicated like putting it in another PC, or connecting it with a cable like an external drive. No biggie though.

If the file types you are trying to recover range from Word docs to images, there are plenty of freeware programs. I have user recuva to get all kinds of documents back. It would be my first choice as it is easy to use for a first timer and has a very high success rate.

If it is simply photos, I would use photorec as it can bypass typical drive errors that says you must format a drive before use, etc...

[bondtoys]

I've been able to recover .jpg files from various formatted media (SD cards, Memory Sticks and HDDs) on my Mac with exif Untrasher.

And no, I did not formate these media myself in the first place.....

[MonBK]

Originally Posted by greggsiam

So many questions....

How was the drive formatted?

Typically when a drive is formatted, it's not in the traditional sense and all the files are still there. Back in the day formatting meant writing all 0's to the drive. Today, formatting just means removing pointers in the File Allocation Table (FAT). That means the files are still there, there are just no pointers to them.

So, if this is the case, as long as the files are not overwritten, they can easily be recovered. For testing, I've thrown 200 images on a SD card, formatted it (quick format in PC, basically not writing 0's to all sectors), then recovered all 200 images with no errors.

What files types are they? Not that is matters, but if you were looking for image files, a program like Photorec would be my first choice.

Is the drive an OS drive, or just another drive in your system? If just another drive, load up the software of choice and run it on the drive. If OS drive, it gets more complicated like putting it in another PC, or connecting it with a cable like an external drive. No biggie though.

If the file types you are trying to recover range from Word docs to images, there are plenty of freeware programs. I have user recuva to get all kinds of documents back. It would be my first choice as it is easy to use for a first timer and has a very high success rate.

If it is simply photos, I would use photorec as it can bypass typical drive errors that says you must format a drive before use, etc...

Thanks Gregg, I tried Recuva and it didn't find anything.

Will go ahead and try Photorec next.

[GradyPhilpott]

Never mind.

[dddrees]

Originally Posted by olivertwist77

Sorry folks for retrieving this old thread, but I have this issue too. All of a sudden my external hard disk stopped working. I am trying to connect to the laptop but nothing shows up. The hard disk is not even making any sound. I need to recover the data from the hard drive. I have looked many places and discovered this Disk Drill tool here https://www.cleverfiles.com/hard-dri...-recovery.html . I'm affraid of paying money and getting none data back. The tool is not cheap btw. Maybe someone has some real experience with using recovery tools? Were they effective for you?

Sounds more like a hardware issue to me. If that’s the case a software program alone isn’t going to be a viable solution for you. I think your probably going to have to locate someone who is capable of recovering the data for you.

[enjoythemusic]

Agree, sounds like hardware and yes you can get all data back (except that which was being written at time of death) from many services. Had a friend at a major HW manufacturer do me a favor and he recovered all data easily (well, easy FOR HIM to do).

[Abdullah71601]

Take the external drive to a computer repair shop. They’ll have your data back in minutes for less than a hundred bucks.

[dddrees]

If successful you may wish to store your data in the future on more than just one device. I actually go to the extent of keeping one external drive off site in a safety deposit box. So it’s one copy on my computer, one on an external drive at home, and another on a drive in my safety deposit box. It really just depends on how valuable your data is to you. But actually this type of thing cost me very little since I would have a safety deposit box regardless and it cost very little for 2 external drives.

[figbo]

Originally Posted by MonBK

If so what program did you use?

Any help appreciated.

I thought you were into the floppy things?