Recover Formatted Hard Drive

Hello all,

i formatted my HD by accident and lost all my data, now i had read about software that can recover my old data. There are so many on the web that i dont know wich one is good or can be trust.

If someone know about this issue or have experience with it, please help me, instruct me how to get it back, i got all my college data on it and cant lose it.

Thank you

 

first off, try downloading a linux(live) program, I suggest Ubuntu, burn to cd, boot from the cd into Ubuntu and copy your files from Windows to a usb flash drive or a CD.

If that doesn't work, post back. I've done the same thing and was able to recover most of my files, since they are not all erased when you format.....

 

Definitely, do not write to the HD any further.

I use Ontrack's easy recovery pro or GetDataBack for recovery, and they have worked well for me. I've had to format sometimes to get EasyRecovery to work but that is fine so long as that is all you do; format only.

 

I've heard good things about recuva: http://www.recuva.com/

 

Thanks so far, i will try all this,

Firts, ill go with the Ubuntu, could you please explain me the method, i have downloaded Ubuntu now, then what i have to do?

 

hi

burn ubuntu to disk

boot into ubuntu from the disk--it doesn't have to be installed to run it........

run it and explore your hard drive that you formatted.......... look for your documents/folders etc and copy them to a usb flash drive or burn to cd. You'll be able to open up and look in all your windows folders etc. It's very handy and easy to do..........It case you need it.also includes most or all of the common drivers you will need along w/ Firefox, etc in case you need it.

 

How would one explore a filesystem that's been formatted? All of the file structures have been wiped out. Is there a tool on the ubuntu disk that lets you search a drive for missing data and try to rebuild the allocation table?

 

Actually, it's pretty scary just how much is left behind when Windows supposedly "formats" a drive - all of the actual data is right where it always was (Windows formatting doesn't automatically do an overwrite on the disk - and even if it did, it's almost impossible to completely get rid of all trace of the data), mostly what's gone is just the starting points that NTFS used to find its way around the physical disk. If you want to get an idea of just how easy it is to get stuff off of a formatted, but not overwritten, disk, there are any number of partition or data recovery apps out there with demo or shareware versions that will at least give you a view of what can still be found.

I played around with Partition Recovery from Active@ on a hdd that I had formatted and then installed a linux-based OS onto, and even the demo version was able to find and reconstruct thousands of files, including files that had been deleted from the drive when it was still being used as an active drive, and had presumably been overwritten by other files that were saved after the deletion.

Also, the advice to use a Linux system like ubuntu is good advice, because the linux disk drivers are generally better than Windows, and will probably be able to "see" the files still on the formatted partition even though Windows thinks they're all gone.

 

hi orev

well since windows isn't very thorough when it formats a drive, esp w/ a quick format(not sure if thats the case here), you can often still find many documents, etc, that are still intact on the drive. That's why it's so important to WIPE a drive when you sell a pc, hard drive etc, or it's easy to recover files, esp text files, word, excel, wordperfect etc.

sometimes using ubuntu works, sometimes it doesn't. As long as a new OS hasn't already been installed you have the best shot at recoevry any files.

If this doesn't work, at least nothing else has been written to the disk since it's can be run from the CD. And as noted, you can also access the internet etc w/ Ubuntu's version of Firefox to download anything else he might need....

Always worth a shot as I haven't had alot of luck w/ any of the recovery programs......

 

Yup, I have written a guide (see sig) about how to wipe a drive because data is not deleted when you format. My question is, once you have formatted a drive, ubuntu and any other OS will see the new formatting (and blank file table), so it has no reason to search the disk for the data.

Unless there is some special data recovery tool on the ubuntu CD (like recuva) that can scan the drive for this data, I'm not sure that simply "booting a ubuntu cd" will help.

The best thing the OP can do is to take the hard drive out of the computer and then use an external USB enclosure on another computer to do all of the analysis

 

in your opinion, as usual...........

I disagree........