i lost all of my files in format can i get them back?

Status
Not open for further replies.

TheUninvited

Baseband Member
Messages
52
i lost all of my files in format can i get them back?when i was formatting to windows 7...i confused and i didht format the correct disk and now i losted all the files is there any chance to get them back?
 
Use Recuva. I think it can read formatted data.

Edit: As a precaution, when you are loading Windows or any OS, it is a good idea to disconnect your other drives. ;)
 
You will not get them all back. You will be able to recover some of them. The problem is that once you start using the disk and putting new information on there, the old data becomes corrupted. So if you formatted and installed Windows to that drive by accident, Windows over wrote some of those files and they will not be able to be recovered. If by chance you only formatted it and have not touched it since you reinstalled Windows, you have a better chance of getting all your files back.
 
nothing comes back from that i remember i create in the disk space a new partipation 8 mb
and the format files is been there...
 
I agree with the above - especially if you did a "Quick" format. Most of the data will still be there, if not over-written. It is just not mapped in the allocation tables, and those disk locations have been marked as available - ready to be written to. But as noted, as soon as the drive is used again, recovery becomes less and less a possibility.

For sure, the drive should be installed as a secondary drive, or installed in an enclosure attached to another computer. Then try the recovery programs. Do NOT use this drive as a boot drive because the OS will create a bunch of temporary files on the boot disk, overwriting data in the process.

Of course, hindsight is, or better be, 20/20. If you had a current backup, this would not be a big issue.
 
Then about the only thing I can suggest is to take it to a data recovery service. There they will use forensic analysis on the disk, or even individual platters. This requires sophisticated equipment and highly trained forensic technicians working in a "clean" lab. As you can guess, this service can be very expensive - into the $thousands. So, you need to decide how important that data is, then decide if hiring a data recovery service is worth it.

That said, in spite of what CSI, NCIS, and other TV shows might have us believe, there is still no guarantee of success.
 
DataGetBack for NTFS works pretty well. I have had a great deal of success. The others are correct in the fact that since the drive has probably been written to post format some files may be corrupted.

DataGetBack has a trial version and paid version. You can run the trial just to see how much the software will get back for you then judge for yourself if it is worth the license to get your files back.
 
I'm betting he didn't get back files because he created an 8mb partition and just searched that with Recuva. What he should have done was quick format the drive again, using all available space, then scanned that.
 
Another option would be to do the forensics yourself. It would definitely take some time learning and the success rate isn't as high, but it's free :3 I'd start with a backtrack live cd then research the tools on their and other partition recovery tools.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom